Cats in Art: Self-Portrait with His Wife (Baldrighi)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

Click image for larger.  Image credit Wikimedia Commons, here.  Self-Portrait with His Wife, Guiseppe Baldricghi, 1756, oil on canvas, 49" x 63", held by Galleria Nazionale, Parma, Italy.  

Zuffi explains:

In this forceful double portrait Baldrighi depicts himself in his work clothes, in the process of posing his wife. The young woman is sitting a little stiffly, with a forced smile. On her left, with a vitality that contrasts with here bearing, the cat has focused on the little birds' cage, and has assumed the typical pose cats adopt before pouncing.

"Vitality"--why, cats own that word!  While the humans work, the cat, well, continues to do cat things.