by L A Vocelle
Figure 6.18. Wedding at Cana, Paolo Veronese,1563, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Figure 6.18a. Wedding at Cana, Detail of Cat
In Federico Barocci’s 1575 Madonna of the Cat (figure 6.19), John the Baptist sits next to Mary and teases a cat with a goldfinch, a symbol of Christ’s passion. While Joseph looks on, Mary cradles the baby Jesus in her left arm.
Figure 6.19. The Madonna of the Cat, Federico Barocci, 1575, National Gallery, London
THE CAT IN BAROQUE ART
By the 1590’s, the Baroque style was just beginning to spread across Europe. Noted for its dramatic use of line and vivid color, the style, through its energy and movement, expressed power and control. Favored by the church, the main patron of art at the time, the easily understood Baroque style conveyed the church’s religious, moral and ethical messages to the common people.
In Annibale Carracci’s Two Children Teasing a Cat (figure 6.20), a boy and a girl hover over a cat on a table and dangle a crayfish in front of it. The lesson: if you play with fire, you will get scratched. In much the same manner as Carracci’s painting, Judith Leyster, a Dutch genre painter, reveals the same message in her 1635 Boy and Girl with a Cat and an Eel (figure 6.21). Here, the boy holds an eel up in order to entice a cat; the girl pulls the cat’s tail. Undoubtedly upset, it is almost certain that the cat will eventually scratch and bite them both.
Figure 6.20. Two Children Teasing a Cat, Annibale Carracci, 1590, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Figure 6.21. A Boy and Girl with a Cat and Eel, Judith Leyster, 1635, National Gallery, London
In Still Life with Dead Game and Fruit and Vegetables (1614) (figure 6.22) by Frans Snyders, the animals represent virtue and vice, good and evil. A barely visible predatory black cat, with piercing yellow eyes, eagerly peers out from under a table watching two cocks fight —the loser, his intended victim.
The German painter, Chrisoph Paudiss, caught an unusual domestic scene wherein an old man seems to be irritatingly interrupted from reading by a playful cat. In an entirely different vein, in Giovanni Lanfranco’s 1620, Naked Man Playing with a Cat in Bed (figure 6.23), the cat represents woman, lust, and desire in a rather risqué painting for the time.
The Dutch painters of the golden age turned to realism instead of religious subjects, as portrait painting was much more lucrative. Dutch genre paintings tend to illustrate everyday life at all levels of society, and cats, essential to most households, are often in these still lifes and portraits.
Figure 6.22. Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits and Vegetables, Frans Snyders, 1614, Art Institute of Chicago
Figure 6.23. Naked Man Playing with a Cat in Bed, Giovanni Lanfranco, 1620, Commerce d’Art, London
In The Katzen Familie (1650), the Dutch painter Jan Steen (figure 6.24) captures a lively group of people playing instruments, singing and drinking. Amidst this raucous din, our gaze gravitates to two women in the upper left hand corner of the painting, who have turned their attention to a mother cat and her kittens.
Figure 6.24. The Katzen Familie, Jan Steen, 1650, Magyar Szepmuveszeti Muzeum, Budapest
In Steen’s The Dancing Lesson (figure 6.25), four children sit on and around a table. One older boy holds a cat up by its front paws, so it can stand on its back legs to dance to the tune the girl in the foreground plays on a flute. The children are laughing; the dog barking. Polite society at this time did not condone dancing, so it is likely that the cat is a metaphor for lust and lechery, and to accentuate this attitude, at the very top of the picture, a man looks down judgmentally. In a somewhat similar scene, in Steen’s The Family Concert, a joyous group sits together at a table, playing their various instruments, while a cat crouches over an empty bowl with a dog approaching in the foreground.
Figure 6.25. The Dancing Lesson, Jan Steen, 1665-1668, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Dutch genre paintings did not always mirror happy and gay scenes; they also touched upon the everyday domestic problems that had to be dealt with. In The Idle Servant (figure 6.26) by Nicolaes Maes, a mistress confronts issues arising from having an inept housemaid. A cat, in the upper right hand corner of the picture, is making away with a bird, symbolic of the chaos in the house, while the housemaid and her employer contemplate the mess of dishes on the floor.
Figure 6.26. The Idle Servant, Nicolaes Maes, 1655, National Gallery, London
In the Dutch Baroque painting of Gabriël Metsu, (1629-1667) Woman Feeding her Cat (figure 6.27), a woman sits with a plate on her lap, a dead chicken in the forefront and a fallen flower from a bouquet both symbolizing death. She offers a dark striped cat, begging at her knee, a morsel. The viewer cannot help but be affected by this dim, lonely scene.
Figure 6.27. Woman Feeding her Cat, Gabriël Metsu,1662-1665, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Etchings also conveyed dramatic energy, as seen in Man with Cat on Shoulder and Mouse in Hand by Cornelius Danckerts (1630-40). The man looks almost frightened by what the cat will do to get the mouse he holds in his hand; whereas in Two Children with Cat, the two boys laugh heartily, while holding a more contented feline (figures 6.28, 6.29).
Figure 6.28. Man with a Cat on Shoulders and a Mouse in Hand, Cornelius Danckerts, 1630-1640, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Figure 6.29. Two Children with a Cat, Cornelius Danckerts, after Frans Hals, 1630-1640, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
In the Italian Baroque painting of Giuseppe Recco (1634-1695), Cat Stealing Fish (figure 6.30), a cat sits atop a crate, and true to its nature, claws at a fish fallen from the box. The lighting is intense and the action of the cat grabs our attention.
Figure 6.30. Cat Stealing Fish, Giuseppe Recco, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
In the French genre painting, Peasant Interior with an Old Flute Player, (1642) (figure 6.31) by Louis Le Nain, a cat sits peacefully to the right of the matriarch’s chair; opposite sits a dog. Again, the animals are added to accentuate the idea of happy domesticity. Ironically, it was Champfluery, author of Cats Past and Present, who through his friendship with Courbet, managed to get Le Nain’s paintings into the Louvre in the 1800’s due to a revived interest in peasant life.
CATS PORTRAYED ON CERAMICS
Not only were cats in paintings, but they were also copied onto ceramic ware. In the late 1600’s, a cat jug made from Delftware, which originated in the Netherlands, must have been enjoyed in a well-to-do household. A cat portrayed on a Burselem dish from 1680, with an almost human face, looks straight at us, its tail almost camouflaged by the lines on its body. A brave mouse runs up the right side of the plate near the cat’s head (Grigsby, 2000).
Figure 6.31. Peasant Interior with an Old Flute Player, Louis Le Nain, 1642, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
THE REFORMATION
Shadowing the great rebirth of the Renaissance was the Reformation. When in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, a reform movement sprang up, Protestantism. The cat, somehow representative of Catholicism, and always a victim of man’s abuse, became a key symbol for English reformist protests. Often the cat represented priests and clergy, as in a horrifying episode of animal cruelty that occurred in Cheape, England, recounted in a chronicle of the time. “The same 8th April being then Sunday, a cat with her head shorne, and the likenesse of a vestment cast over her, with her fore feet tied together, and a round piece of paper like a singing cake† between them, was hanged on a gallows in Cheape, near the cross in the parish of St. Matthew; which cat, being taken down, was carried to the Bishop of London, and he caused the same to be showed at Paul’s Cross by the preacher, Dr. Pendelton” (cited in: Jardine, 1847, p. 46) (figure 6.32). Protestants also burnt effigies of the pope stuffed with live cats that would shrilly cry in pain, somehow pleasing the mad crowds. “Belling a cat”, (figure 6.33) first mentioned in Bidpay and then in Aesop’s Fables, during the Reformation, came to mean that there was a need to depose a Bishop, and would pose the question who would be brave enough to do it?
Fig
ure 6.32. A Cat Hung up in Cheapside, Habited like a Priest, From Fox’s Book of Martyrs, 16th Century
Figure 6.33. Belling the Cat, (Detail) Pieter Bruegel, 1559, from Netherlandish Proverbs
Protestants, as an insult to Catholics, published various engravings of friars and nuns in compromising circumstances. In one engraving a friar teaches cats to sing. In the center of the picture, a friar stands with a cat on both his shoulders and one on his head. Three more cats are on the table in front of him with their paws on sheets of music.
The lyrics are: The organs are disliked I’m wonderous sorry,
For the music is our romish Church’s Glory.
And ere that it shall music want I’ll try,
To make these cats sing and that want supply
(Hattaway, 2002, p. 363).
Other strange abominations occurred, such as the eventual Bishop of London, John Stokesly, being charged with baptizing a cat in order to find lost treasure in his parish of Calley Weston, Northamptonshire. Even though he was cleared of the charges, he would be called “heretic-hemtu” or “bloody bishop christen-cat” (Cressy, 2000). Another Bishop, Matthew Wren, was highly upset at the fact that protesters roasted a live cat on a spit outside his church during the New Year’s Day service, which disrupted his sermon with the unlucky animal’s tortured screams.
The cat quickly became the victim of not only Protestant politics, but Catholic as well. In the mid-1600’s, the Catholics used the cat to protest against the Roundheads. They shaved the poor feline’s head and cut off its ears and proclaimed it a Roundhead. This was the ultimate insult. By associating the Roundheads with animals, the Catholics maligned them as inferior to man (Fudge, 2004).
Strange incidences of cat cruelty as well as other absurdities continued, and in 1662, in Henley, Oxfordshire, as a silly prank, five young men baptized a cat in the church’s font and named him Tom. Meanwhile, games such as “cat clubbing” were enjoyed by the Dutch. A cat was placed in a barrel that was hung from a tree; and the players would try to break it, and set the cat free, in order to chase it down and capture it again, and have the whole episode replayed (Klein, 2006). Another cruel Dutch tradition, which was mainly practiced for newlyweds, was Ketelmusik. A group of musicians, in a crude effort to serenade newlyweds, beat pots and pans and pulled the fur of cats so that their screams accompanied the music. This ritual spread to Germany, where it was called Katzenmusik, and even to France, as fair le chat (Ruff, 2001).
To top these bizarre happenings, according to an old Germanic law, cats could attend trials and serve as witnesses against thieves and murderers. In fact, in a 16th century trial, a French lawyer, Bartholomew Chassenée, defended rats against the charge of destroying a barely crop. He claimed that the rats could not appear in court for fear of a cat hindering their trip (Evans, 1906).
Not all of the cat’s adventures during the Early Modern Period are marked by cruelty and absurdity. Interspersed between tales of horrible abuses, stories and poems of gratitude to the cat have survived.
Sir Izaak Walton (1593-1683) in 1653 wrote in The Compleat Angler, or, the Contemplative Man’s Recreation, “When my cat and I entertain each other with mutual apish tricks, as playing with a garter, who knows but that I make my cat more sport than she makes me? Shall I conclude her to be simple, that has her time to begin or refuse to play as freely as I myself have? Nay, who knows but that it is a defect of my not understanding her language (for doubtless cats talk and reason with one another) that we agree no better? And who knows but that she pities me for being no wiser than to play with her, and laughs and censures my folly for making sport for her, when we two play together?”
CATS IN LITERATURE
Cats made their mark upon men’s hearts, whether for better or for worse, throughout the literature of the Early Modern Period. John Skelton (1460-1529), a poet laureate under Henry VII and Henry VIII’s Jester, wrote a poem much like Agathias did in AD 550 entitled, Philip Sparrow.
Philip Sparrow
When I remember again
How my Philip was slain,
Never half the pain
Was between you twain,
Pyramust this be, (tragic lovers in the tale by Ovid)
As then befell me.
I wept and I wailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again,
Whom Gib† our cat had slain.
Oh Cat of churlish kind,
The fiend was in your mind
When thou my bird untwin’d!
I would thou hadst been blind!
The leopards savage,
The lions in their rage
Might catch thee in their paws,
And gnaw thee in their jaws!
The serpents of Libany
Might sting thee venomously!
The dragons with their tongues
Might poison thy liver and thy lungs!
The manticors of the mountains
Might feed upon thy brains!
An it were a Jew,
It would make one rue,
To see my sorrow new.
These villainous false cats
were made for mice and rats.
From me was taken away
By Gib, our cat savage,
That in furious rage
Caught Philip by the head
And slew him there stark dead!
(Payne & Hunter, 2003, pp. 3-11).
In addition, Joachim du Bellay (1525-60) greatly loved and grieved the loss of his cat if only just because it offered him some respite from the gnawing rats and mice that plagued his mattress at night.
Eptiah on a Pet Cat
My life seems dull and flat,
And, as you’ll wonder what,
Magney, has made this so,
I want you first to know
It’s not for rings or purse
But something so much worse:
Three days ago I lost
All that I value most,
My treasure, my delight,
I cannot speak, or write,
Or even think of what
Belaud, my small grey cat
Meant to me, tiny creature,
Masterpiece of nature
In the whole world of cats,—
And certain death to rats!—
Whose beauty was worthy
Of immortality.
Then a detailed description of Belaud—
My only memory
Of him annoying me
Is that, sometimes at night
When rats began to gnaw
And rustle in my straw
Mattress, he’d waken me
Seizing most dexterously
Upon them in their flight.
Now that the cruel right hand
Of death comes to demand
My bodyguard from me,
My sweet security
Gives way to hideous fears;
Rats come and gnaw my ears,
And mice and rats at night
Chew up the lines I write!
(Gooden, 1946, pp. 26-31)
The English poet George Turberville (1540-97) proclaimed his love for his mistress by transforming into a cat.
The Lover, whose Mistress Feared
A Mouse, Declareth that he would
Become a cat if he might Have His Desire.
….I would become a Cat,
to combat with the creeping Mouse,
and scratch the screechy Rat.
I would be present, aye,
And at my Ladie’s call,
To gard her from the fearfull Mouse,
In Parlour and in Hall;
In kitchen, for his Lyfe,
He should not show his hed;
The Pease in Poke should lie untoucht
When she were gone to Bed.
The Mouse should stand in Feare,
So should the squeaking Rat;
All this would I doe if I were
Converted to a Cat
&nbs
p; (Gooden, 1946, p. 32).
The tutor to Louis XIV, Francoise de la Mothe Le Voyer (1588-1672) wrote an epitaph for the Duchess’ of Maine’s cat.
Puss passer-by, within this simple tomb
Lies one whose life feel Atropho’s hath shred;
The happiest cat on earth hath heard her doom,
And sleeps forever in a marble bed.
Alas! What long delicious days I’ve seen!
O Cats of Egypt, my illustrious sires,
You who on altars, bound with garlands, green,
Have melted hearts, and kindled fond desires,
Hymns in your praise were paid, and offerings too,
But I’m not jealous of those rights divine,
Since Ludovisa loved me, close and true,
Your ancient glory was less proud than mine.
To live a simple pussy by her pride
Was nobler far than the deified”
(Gooden, 1946, p. 33).
Even the first great poet of Japanese Haiku, Basho Matsuo (1644-1694), mentions a cat.
Why so scrawny, cat?
starving for fat fish
or mice….
or Backyard love? (Yasuda, 1957)
Cat in Love
The lover cat
over a crumbled stone
comes and goes (Ueda & Basha, 1995 p. 39)
Cats’ love
When it is over, hazy
moonlight in the bedroom
(Ueda & Basha, 1995, p. 337)
And the cat of course is mentioned in nursery rhymes.
“Jack Spratt
