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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Sunday, March 25, 2012

clever times two, cat vs. parrot

thanks wikimedia commons {{PD-old}}
Sebastiano Lazzari (Italian, born in Verona c. 1730) painted a number of these curious trompe-l'oeil works.  This one is Still Life with Cat and Parrot, though I imagine neither of the two players was still for long.  The card nailed to the table is the Queen of Clubs, and the diagrams in the back seem to show varying positions of the sun in relation to the earth.  The basket full of berries is a puzzle; I can see the strawberry and the butterfly perched on its long stem, but the others - not raspberries, not anything I can identify.  Lazzari painted cats and parrots a number of times, separately; I like to think these two are eyeballing each other for a chance at proving  who's smartest.

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