Cats in Art: "Madonna Cat" (Mind)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art.  Having moved on from Stefano Zuffi's marvelous work, The Cat in Art, I am now using some ideas from Caroline Bugler's equally impressive book, The Cat/3500 Years of the Cat in Art.   

This is the third of several posts on the works of Gottfried Mind, AKA The Raphael of Cats.

Image credit The Great Cat, title unspecified, Gottfried Mind, no other information available.

And the kitty close-up:

I was going to post a famous Christmas painting that contained a cat...only I totally struck out in locating such an image.  There were plenty of opportunities to insert a cat into a famous painting but so far as I could tell, there is no "great master" with a Christmas theme and a cat.

So I elected to remain with the art of Gottlieb Mind for another week and searched his images for a kitty with a Madonna-like expression.  

Look at that cat face: the word that comes to mind is serene.  Much like Mary has been depicted in nativity art over the ages.

The caveat, of course, is that Mind's works tend to be somewhat under the radar.  In fact, this image only comes from an art appreciation site called The Great Cat, thus I am relying on the unverified Internet that this is really a Gottfried Mind image.

So, suspend disbelief, as I have, and treat this image as a Christmas cat from the pen of Gottfried Mind some 200+ years ago.  Merry Christmas!


[Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!]