Last week I put up another version of the Last Supper, by Huguet. In this image by Domenico Ghirlandaio, the cat in the foreground is a bit smaller and less prominent, but much closer to Christ.
Image and comment credits here. Last Supper: Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494, fresco, 1480, held by Museu Di San Marco, Refectory, Florence, Italy.
With customary ease, Ghirlandaio fills the lunettes with large trees and birds in flight against a bright sky whose light is reflected onto the right-hand wall where an open window frames a perching peacock. The rest is in shadow. Two flower-displays complete the frame which encloses the space. A cat, waiting patiently for a hoped-for scrap of meat, lends a touch of intimacy and domesticity that is rarely lacking in Ghirlandaio.
So...over 500 years ago, Ghirlandaio paints a fresco that still exists today, and in it captures so well the "touch of intimacy and domesticity" that is the embodiment of cats.
I am a bit confused about one thing; on the internet as well as this version of Ghirlandaio's last supper, I have seen one where there is no cat. Did he make two?
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