under my paw

Gift of Marilynn B. Alsdorf, www.artic.edu

You can barely see the mouse under this feline's golden paw, but those who know cats will know that look of open-mouthed triumph.  It's as if the cat was savoring the scent of victory.  When I tell you that this jewel was crafted in Baroque Spain (c. 1575-1625), when that nation was still the leading world power and at a high point of its culture, you can see this cat had something most delicious to symbolize. 
This piece has seen some changes in its time, most readily apparent in its ears.  See the holes?  It had earrings once.  If you'd like to do some art-historical-type digging into the life of this piece, find this:
 -- Ian Wardropper et al, "Renaissance Jewelry in the Alsdorf Collection," The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 25, 2 (2000), p. 69 and 96, no. 32.  I have a link here, all text.

offstage

Bequest of Harry G. Sperling, 1971 www.metmuseum.org

No one knows precisely whom they are, this guarded young noblewoman and her fuzzy watchman.  Painted by Alonzo Sanchez Coello around the 1570s  (as it's thought), this "Portrait of a Woman" could be a member of Philip II's court; the Metropolitan Museum of Art also has citations suggesting she's a member of the Pernstein or Aragon families.  I've found out that right about this time, Vratislav von Pernstein, Chancellor of Bohemia, had married two of his daughters into the Aragon nobility. 
There's a Mannerist hyperattention to detail in the portrayal of rich textiles and surfaces, but at the same time, there is an intensity here that is arresting.  I say this not only because of this young woman's intense dark-eyed gaze; look at her dog, below.

credit as above

 Someone he liked?  Someone he didn't trust?  There is an implied third relationship here, and we'll never know whom it was who stood offstage.

the parachutist cats

CC BY-SA full attribution below

While I absolutely cannot say I approve of making cats parachute (though I'm sure it was probably only from a few feet up), I adore this poster.   Found originally at Europeana, this gloriously confident kitty is from the collection at the Circus Museum, online in the Netherlands.  See that record here. Now, finding anything about the Cirque Mexicain was tough, but I did find and translate the following from this page:

 Silvestrini (of the Amoros-Silvestrini brothers, who promoted the most circuses at this time and place - curator) was the introducer of Italian circuses in Spain. Two of them began their tour in Girona: the Circus Jarz (also published as Italian, 1957) and the Aurora Italian Circus (also called Casartelli, 1958). Together with the Circo Cristiani (1958), the three maintained the essence of the circus of yesteryear, familiar, with versatile artists, capable of presenting numbers of diverse disciplines. In some seasons, the Amorós-Silvestrini were associated with the Valencian Salvador Hervás, presenting shows like Circo Mexicain. When this circus visited Girona during the fairs of 1959, journalist Jordi Oms interviewed the trainer Gerardi inside the cage, surrounded by seven lions. 

Citation as found at Europeana: Cirque Mexicain The parachutist cats. Organization for Europe and 
Africa, Salvador Hervas http://europeana.eu/portal/record/2021603/teylers_col28_dat11512_TEY0010005765.html. Manzal Circus Museum http://www.circusmuseum.nl/teylers:col28:dat11512:TEY0010005765. CC BY-SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/

grab the dog

The Cloisters Collection, 2016 www.metmuseum.org

This sleek guy is a clever bit of 15th or 16th century Spanish ironwork.  He's a door handle.  The streamlined, sinuous curlicue of his tail speaks to me of Moorish influence. Though the Moors fell from power in Spain in the late 15th century, their centuries of presence would have made their graceful patterns very much a part of the area's common visual language.

a horse for the harvest

See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Outside the town of Fraga in Spain lie the ruins of the Roman Villa Fortunatus. This villa dates from the third century AD, but its beautiful series of animal mosaics is thought to have been installed a century later.  The series is an agricultural calendar, with an animal representing each month.  Though it's a farming calendar, few of the animals portrayed are domesticated.  This is one of the few: the horse of September with a vine, representing autumnal games and the grapes to be harvested.  At least that's what I've figured out from trying to translate this page on the mosaics, which is part of a fascinating look at the site overall.

rabbit, lisbon, 2014

By r2hox from Madrid, Spain (Bajo el puente - 30)
[CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Bajo el puente" - "under the bridge."  Photographer r2hox's blog Arte en la Calle is full of observed street art as vivid and powerful as this.

a precious beggar

The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art CC0 1.0)

Once upon a time, someone with a sense of humor and a healthy income had this pearly mooch for a pendant. Its design and craft has been attributed to a Spanish goldsmith working around 1580 to 1590, a late Renaissance piece, when pendants were a very popular form of jewelry.  Here's a pretty good page on this subject.

a travelogue cat 1899

thanks british library flickr (PD)

This little black kitty is a bit of a mystery.  He's found on page 22 of "Espana Negra," a travelogue by the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren which Dario de Regoyos translated into Spanish and published in 1899, "with illustrations by the author."  So that's Emile Verhaeren?  Then why are de Regoyos' initials on this piece?  Verhaeren was one of the founding individuals behind the French Symbolist literary movement, not a visual artist.  So I think I know the answer - translator = author. Does it seem random he'd be translating and illustrating a work by a Belgian?  Not so much when you learn that he studied in Brussels and was active in modern art movements there.
Want to see the actual book?  You can see it here!