The fireside sphinx/The Cat in Art
CHAPTER VI
THE CAT IN ART
"A little lion, small and dainty sweet,
With sea-grey eyes and softly stepping feet."
IF the cat has been exiled from ecclesiastical architecture, she has triumphed in Christian art. The early Italian masters admitted her over and over again into their sacred pictures, painting her lovingly, and with a delicate appreciation, not only of her grace, but of her domestic character, as though they sought to represent through her the human, earthly, simple life which they blended so sweetly with the mysterious and divine. In many pictures of the Annunciation we find a cat drowsing upon the Blessed Virgin's work-basket, or curled up on a corner of her azure robe. We see her repeatedly in paintings of the Last Supper, the Marriage Feast at Cana, and the birth of the Blessed Virgin; which final subject—so dear to the Italian heart—was seldom deemed complete without the introduction of a cat into the spacious bed-chamber of Saint Ann. This is all the more pleasing because of Pussy's conspicuous absence from Pagan art. The dog leaps by the side of Artemis, or bays at the moon while Endymion slumbers. The kid drinks from the shepherd's bowl, the young bull is led garlanded to the sacrifice, the stag falls, pierced by the hunter's dart. But of the little fireside Sphinx we have no sign nor token. She and she alone finds no place among the marble animals of the Vatican. Those wise and watchful hounds, those lions and wolves and spotted leopards make no room for her. We see the hare couching upon her form, and the lobster lying on its rocky bed; but for the most beautiful of domestic animals we search, and search in vain. Only in the Capitoline Museum may be found a spirited bas-relief, of a late period, which represents a woman trying to teach her cat to dance to the music of a lyre. The cat, a sullen beast with no love of music or dancing in its soul, has paused in the unwelcome task to snap viciously at a young duck, which, with obvious lack of caution, is thrusting forward its inquisitive head. Centuries later, Tintoretto painted just such a pussy snapping at just such a duck, in his charming picture of Leda,—Leda caressing the amorous swan, while a dear little dog jumps up at her, vainly striving to attract attention. She was evidently partial to pets.
Among the mosaics taken from Pompeii, and placed in the Museum of Naples, are several animated representations of cats. Two of the finest were found in the House of the Faun,—unlovely pictures both of them, revealing Pussy as an outlaw and marauder. That there were homes in which she was prized and cherished is prettily proven by a mutilated marble preserved at Bordeaux. It is a Gallo-Roman tomb of the fourth century, and on it we discern the broken outlines of a young girl clasping her cat in her arms, as though in death they were not divided.
From these fleeting glimpses of Pussy, before she plunged into the long darkness of the Middle Ages, it is a pleasure to turn to those later, calmer years, when, having survived the depreciation and persecution of centuries, we see her once again basking in the light and warmth of a rapidly ripening civilization. Even during the stormiest period of her career she was better off in Italy than in fierce Northern lands; and, with the dawning of fairer days, no happier proof could be afforded of the affection she inspired than her constant presence in Italian art. It is true that she makes an equally early appearance upon Flemish canvases. In the Gallery of Madrid there is a fantastic picture by Hieronymus Bosch, representing the birth of Eve, in which a fierce but very badly painted cat is prematurely breaking the peace of Paradise by eating a poor little tadpole; and in Van Tulden's "Orpheus taming the Beasts,"—also in Madrid,—we see the animals great and small listening to the melody in a state of mild rapture,—like Germans in a Munich beer-cellar,—with the solitary exception of the cat, who erects an angry tail, and evinces a disposition to fight a sleepy and music-loving lion.
The faithfully wrought scenes of common life, which were the delight and triumph of the Dutch and Flemish schools, afforded a sympathetic setting for the cat. It would have been strange indeed if Jan Fyt, who copied beast and bird with such patient fidelity, had slighted this little model sitting in his chimney corner, or prowling panther-like along his neighbour's wall. He was well aware of her value. He knew how finely her pliant strength contrasted with the stillness of the poor dead pheasants whose ruffled plumage he so loved to paint. In one of his pictures in Milan there are two splendid, greedy, thievish cats, instinct with life and energy, that creep with cautious steps and gleaming eyes about the heaped-up game. The subject commended itself to other artists, but few gave it such lively and forcible expression. Compare the treatment of Jan Fyt's work with that of the "Poulterer's Shop," by Van Mieris, which hangs in the National Gallery of London, and in which a pretty tortoise-shell pussy, soft-furred and innocent-eyed, looks wistfully at a dead duck hanging well out of her reach. The Flemish painter felt, and felt with reluctant admiration, the lawlessness of the animals he drew; the Dutchman transferred to canvas his own sleepy pet, curled up in the warmest corner of his hearth. His cat is as gentle, for all her greed, as is that comfortable beast, so drowsy and unconcerned, in Jordaens's tumultuous "Twelfth Night;" or the mother puss who watches her five kittens with tender and over-anxious solicitude in Jan Steen's equally uproarious "Revellers."
Such pictures seem made for cats. To paint a kitchen without one would be like painting a meadow without cows. Worse, indeed; for there is no such air of destitution, of utter and melancholy incompleteness about a cowless meadow, as about a catless kitchen. No effort of imagination was needed to introduce Pussy into a Dutch interior. She was there by virtue of natural selection, of justifiable and inevitable proprietorship; but to gently insinuate her into the company of saints and angels required more courage, or more affection. Only now and then an early Flemish painter ventured upon such a flight of fancy. There is in Munich an Annunciation by Hendrick met de Bles, in which the Blessed Virgin's cat, a large handsome white animal, sits sleeping serenely by her side.
When we turn to Italy, however, we are charmed to see how naturally and sweetly the cat slips into sacred art. We expect to find her in the Garden of Eden, though Domenichino, aware perhaps of the legend which denies her this privilege, has carefully excluded her from the group of animals pressing uncomfortably close to his beautiful and seductive Eve. Jacopo Bassano, on the contrary, either did not know the story, or refused to give it heed. The Ark with its crowded freight was, as might be supposed, the great resource of such a painter, forced by the current of his time into a religious groove. Bassano profited by the Deluge all his life. He painted the beasts entering their asylum; he painted them departing; he painted them scattered upon Mount Ararat, making up their minds where they would go next; and always he painted a cat, filling the most conspicuous place, supercilious, combative, and alert. Among the beautiful frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, is one which represents the animals leaving the Ark; and here, too, we see a large cat facing all its companions with the resolute and somewhat condescending air of an assured favourite.
In pictures of the Annunciation, the cat that occasionally lies curled at the Blessed Virgin's feet lends to a subject, so fraught with spiritual significance, an air of homely simplicity. Her presence, like that of the water jar, or the open basket heaped with unfinished sewing, serves to indicate the modest routine of daily life, interrupted so strangely by the Archangel's message. There is an Annunciation by Barocci which hangs in the Vatican Gallery, and in which we see a fine grey cat sleeping undisturbed upon the Virgin's work; while in another painting by the same artist at Budapest, a cat rests tranquilly on a cushion, looking with half-shut, indifferent eyes at the angelic visitor. Indifference is, in fact, her rôle in art. The most riotous Annunciation in all Christendom is a partly obliterated fresco by Taddeo Zucchero, on the portico of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. Scores of angels, broad-pinioned, athletic, and, for the most part, naked, accompany Gabriel on his mission. They wing their tumultuous flight through the air, darting hither and thither, playing clamorously upon every kind of musical instrument, and circling about the Blessed Maid, who stands, timid and frightened, in the farthest corner of the room. On a chair close at hand lies a cat, drowsily watching the celestial multitude. She uncurls her limbs, and lifts her head a little, as though startled from sleep, but that is all. Another minute, and she will settle softly down again upon her cushions. She is not in the least disturbed.
The same spirit of unconcern distinguishes Saint Ann's cat, who, keeping close to her mistress, affects no interest in anything beyond her own comfort and convenience. Among the frescoes by Puccio, in the choir of the Orvieto Cathedral, are two which represent respectively the vision of Saint Ann, and the birth of the Blessed Virgin. In the first, the Saint is accompanied by a very fine white cat, who, with back high arched and tail erect, drives from the room a meek, intruding dog. In the second, the same pussy stands on her hind-legs, and, profiting by the concentration of everybody's attention upon the new-born baby, helps herself with cool audacity from a little table which has been neatly spread by the bedside. In the Oratorio of Saint Bernardino at Sienna there is a charming treatment of the same subject; and here Saint Ann's cat is coal-black, with gleaming yellow eyes. She looks intelligent, but unamiable, and watches with grave attention the bustling maids who, pleased and smiling, bathe the pretty child.
The picture which of all others, however, best illustrates the temper of the cat, as the Italians knew her two hundred years ago, and as we know her to-day, was painted by Luca Giordano, and hangs in the Imperial Gallery of Vienna. It is another presentation of that ever familiar theme, the birth of the Blessed Virgin. Saint Ann sits upright on her bed. Saint Joachim enters the door. The spacious room is full of attendants, engaged in waiting on their mistress, in airing the baby linen, in washing and admiring the infant. Everybody is busy and excited. Everybody, save Saint Ann, is standing, or kneeling on the floor. There is, in fact, but one chair in the room. On that chair is a cushion, and on that cushion sleeps, serene and undisturbed, a cat.
It is to be regretted that Titian and Velasquez and Murillo gave their manifest preference to dogs. Titian's lap-dogs are the most engaging in art; and the little white woolly creatures—like toy lambs—that Murillo painted, beguile our souls with their air of wistful and sympathetic intelligence. Who does not remember—and remembering, love—the poor little beast in the Louvre, who holds up one paw beseechingly, and begs for a peep at the newborn Virgin? A small, fat, azure-winged angel, carrying a basket of baby linen, and bursting with pride over the importance of his task, decides upon his own authority that no dogs shall be permitted to enter, and huffs the petitioner away. Velasquez, though he painted a fine puss in "Las Hilanderas," ignored the race as a rule. His partiality was for hounds. If we want to see cats,—splendid, pampered, luxurious, quarrelsome cats,—we must look for them in the great glowing canvases of Veronese; in those sumptuous scenes where noble Venetians feast opulently, and which are christened—out of courteous deference to the demands of the Church—the "Marriage at Cana," the "Last Supper," or "Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee." It is true that the Church, ungrateful for an attention so manifestly insincere, protested from time to time against the purely mundane character of these pictures; but Venice loved her painter too well to suffer him to be unduly harassed. He might receive grave warnings, gently spoken. He might be officially bidden to blot out the offending jesters, dwarfs, and monkeys. But the Republic, albeit deeply and passionately religious from her birth,—when she turned brigand, it was to steal the relics of a saint,—refused to be scandalized by Veronese's art. Nothing was blotted out, not even the cats; and so we see them to-day curled around the water jars on the floor, and padding away vigorously with their soft hind paws; or tranquilly devouring some chance bone under shadow of the table; or spitting at the handsome, spiritless dogs; or blinking and purring in the arms of negro attendants. They are carelessly painted, all of them. It evidently never occurred to the master to make an accurate study of his feline model. What he sought was that decorative touch which Pussy imparts so graciously when in accord with her surroundings. Her supple limbs, her thick soft fur, her air of ease and arrogance harmonize beautifully with the rich Venetian setting. The utmost point of splendour and self-indulgence reached by nations can do no more than meet and suffice the ordinary tastes of a cat.
A very different view of the subject is afforded us by the Florentine Cenacolas, those monastic frescoes which, with exquisite taste and feeling, adorned the refectory walls. In them we find the sleek convent cat, who appears to have presented herself invariably to the painter's notice, and to have met with every possible attention at his hands. Over and over again we see her; sometimes curled sleepily on the floor, as in Allori's fine but defaced picture in the Carmine; sometimes pilfering gravely from the bread-basket; oftenest sitting—where we least like to see her—at the feet of Judas. In that most lovely fresco by Ghirlandajo in the smaller refectory of San Marco, the Apostles are ranged round the board on high-backed settles. Saint John as usual rests his head upon the table. Judas, quite apart from the others, is balanced uncomfortably on a three-legged stool. An open arcade beyond reveals rich glimpses of leafy trees, with peacocks and other bright-hued birds perched on their branches. In the foreground, close to Judas, sits bolt upright a very intelligent cat, mistrustful, unfriendly, sullen. Her attitude and expression cannot be misunderstood. We all know how a cat looks when compelled to endure the society of a dog, with whom she is assumed to be on friendly terms, but for whom she cherishes the deep suspicion, and deeper animosity, of her race.
It was one of the traditions of Italian art to introduce a cat into representations of the Last Supper, even when these were not painted for convent walls. There is a very fine puss in Andrea Schiavone's picture which hangs in the Borghese Gallery; and, amid the gloom of Tintoretto's giant canvases, we may occasionally see—if we look long enough—a black cat lurking in the densest shadows, its rounded back a mere patch of darkness against the deeper darkness beyond. Even Benvenuto Cellini has placed a cat at the feet of Judas in one of his most beautiful bas-reliefs; but then Cellini was without doubt enamoured of the whole furry race. Delicacy, daring, and an absence of moral standards could not fail of their attractions for him. Among the admirable specimens of his workmanship in the treasury of the Pitti Palace is a silver dish, showing in relief the blessing of Jacob. Rebecca's cat lies curled close at Isaac's feet, watching father and son with contemptuous scrutiny, as if she fully understood the deception which was being practised, but forbore, in indifference, to betray it. On another dish, Orpheus plays to the ravished beasts; and here a stately cat, very courteous and attentive, has a whole section of the border to herself, the bigger animals keeping at a respectful distance.
Raphael has introduced Pussy into at least one of his cartoons,—the "Supper at Emmaus." He has presented her in a most aggressive and disagreeable humour. She crunches a big bone greedily, eyeing meanwhile an unhappy dog that would fain share the feast. Her roughened fur and undulating tail betray the angry disturbance of her mind. If we contrast this cat, so true to nature's self, with some of the other animals wrought into the Vatican tapestries;—with that more than doubtful elephant, upon whose back a playful ape is sporting; or with those curious, portly, short-necked beasts, having heads like horses, and rings through their noses to prove to the world they are camels, we see the supreme advantage of the living model, however seldom she may sit, however slightingly she may be handled. Think of the infinite variety of lions—none of them in the least like lions—that accompany Saint Jerome in art! Sometimes these faithful creatures stand on their hind legs, or trot by their master's side, like amiable dogs; sometimes they have little bullet heads no larger than panthers; sometimes they are all head, like the American bison; and occasionally they resemble overgrown lambs, woolly, foolish, and innocent. It is a genuine relief to look at that quaint old picture by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery, and see Saint Jerome sitting placidly in his study,—his lion having gone out for a stroll,—while a very nice cat lies curled up affectionately at his feet. The painter's conception of the desert's king might have been as vaguely humorous as Carpaccio's; but, when it came to cats, he had no lack of subjects for his inspiration. By the close of the fifteenth century, Pussy had reëstablished her position—albeit a somewhat precarious one—throughout Italy.
In all the pictures we have been considering,—Italian, Dutch, or Flemish,—the cat is introduced as a detail, usually as a bit of household furnishing. She gives a pretty homelike touch, whether we see her enjoying a bowl of Martha's bread and milk; or seeking her share of the feast at Cana; or merely basking in the sun, as Giulio Romano painted her, while the Blessed Virgin and Saint Ann watch their babies at play. She is never the first object of the poet's art, and never even the salient point of a composition; though Barocci has not hesitated to lodge a family of young kittens in the Madonna's lap, nor to represent the little Saint John as mischievously teasing a cat, by holding a captured bird just beyond the reach of her claws. When she accompanies Andrea Doria, it is merely because that great sailor—after the fashion of sailors—loved her heartily, and gave her a place of honour by his side. There is, indeed, in the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome, a well-known study of cats' heads by Salvator Rosa,—a study ill calculated to awaken enthusiasm, or to soften the asperity of the disaffected. All Salvator's pussies are miauling bitterly, their furry faces drawn into lines of wrath and excitation. Involuntarily the chance spectator covers his ears when he looks at them. Few mortals can stand unmoved the curious and complicated vocalism of the cat.
With this melancholy exception, however, we search long ere we see Pussy drawn with the careful and conscientious art of Albrecht Dürer's hare, drawn or painted by herself, and for her own attractions. Cornelius Wissher's famous print is probably the first and finest of its kind. His great round Chat Couché sleeps so soundly, its head lowered, its paws tucked out of sight, that we can almost hear the measured breathing, and see the sleek furry sides heave gently in the very abandonment of repose. A hundred years later, Gottfried Mind, the sullen recluse of Berne, was deemed a little mad because he painted nothing but cats, and would endure no other companionship. All day he sat in his shabby garret, sufficiently occupied by his work, sufficiently amused by his models. Kittens perched on his shoulders, and frolicked gayly among his few possessions. Their mothers purred a murmurous accompaniment, and smiled on him with indulgent contempt. For absolute veracity, his feline portraits have never been surpassed. Mme. Lebrun, who deeply admired his genius, and who purchased many of his finest works, gave him the infelicitous title, "Raphael of Cats;" and the genuine stupidity of the expression fixed it naturally and inevitably in all men's memories. To this day no one ever dreams of alluding to Mind in any other words. His attachment to his furry friends was as ardent and unchanging as was his aversion to intrusive mortals. The sorrow of his life was the massacre of cats in 1809, an epidemic having broken out that year among the pussies of Berne which necessitated this drastic measure. Eight hundred perished at the hands of the police; and though Mind contrived to save most of his own pets, yet the thought of those eight hundred innocents troubled his poor heart until he died.
Eastern artists, the Chinese and Japanese more especially, have devoted their skill for centuries to painting the cat, lavishing upon this congenial subject all the delicate subtlety of the Orient. Their work is little known in Europe and America. Only now and then some rash collector hoards a few priceless pictures, at which his friends stare superciliously, valuing them, as Macaulay valued Celtic manuscripts,—sixpence for the lot. Fifty years ago, however, the drawings of Fo-Kou-Say, or, as the Parisians christened him, Hok'sai, aroused great enthusiasm throughout France; and M. Champfleury, in a somewhat fantastic spirit, likens the Japanese to the Spanish painter, Goya, finding in both the same capricious fancy, the same wanton grace of outline, the same exquisite conception of the waywardness of women and of cats. Several of Hok'sai's beautiful sketches have been reproduced—though with little skill—in M. Champfleury's volume; and their finely imaginative character suggests to the sympathetic mind those charming Oriental stories, so different from the sombre legends of mediæval Christendom. The sinuous and light-limbed pussies that Hok'sai copied so daringly must surely have attended the midnight dances, held in flowery gardens heavy with perfumes and soft with scattered petals, where—so says an ancient Japanese tradition—assemble under the round white moon such cats as are able to pay the entrance fee,—a stolen silken handkerchief. Or perhaps, in calmer mood, they may plod patiently through the pleasant task which for centuries has been assigned to all Persian pussies in the East,—the reading of the "Arabian Nights," from the first page to the last, twice in every year.
Vastly different from these mysterious darlings is the sober simplicity of Burbank's honest cats; or the tigerish fierceness, so frank and free, of the splendid creatures drawn by Delacroix; or the innocent playfulness of Lambert's kittens, almost as well known and well beloved as those of Mme. Henriette Ronner. In truth, Lambert and Mme. Ronner may be said to divide the honours easily between them, the larger share falling to the lady's lot. Their pictures hang in the Luxembourg and other great modern galleries. Prints and photographs have made their work familiar to the world. They should both be held in some degree responsible for the great wave of cat-worship which has engulfed all Christendom in the past twenty-five years. The lively affection which Mme. Ronner's cats inspire in every heart has softened the asperities of life for the whole feline race. No one can look without love upon these pretty creatures, these baby pussies all gayety and grace, scrambling with foolish temerity over chair and table, radiant in their self-sufficiency, and always the objects of deep maternal solicitude.
"Kittens, than Eastern Houris fairer seen,
Whose bright eyes glisten with immortal green."
If Mme. Ronner's family groups are distinctly artificial in composition, each kitling playing its little part in a manner too effective for individual caprice, her simpler studies are open to no such untimely criticism. She has painted placid meditative cats, immersed in thought or sinking sweetly into slumber, that charm our souls with the dignity of their egotism, the frank expression of their supreme self-love. The weakness of her work is possibly its aristocratic narrowness of field. Like Watteau, she is a "Prince"—or Princess—"of Court Painters," never wandering from the sumptuous atmosphere of ease and elegance and repose. Her earlier pictures were not cast in this mould; but for many years her pussies have been soft pampered playthings, who frolic through life without a care, and whose only burden is the courtly one,—ennui. What Mr. Pater says of Watteau's men and women might well apply to Mme. Ronner's cats.
"Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape he composes, and among the accidents of which they group themselves with such a perfect fittingness, a certain light we should seek for in vain upon anything real."
In this engaging mummery, Mme. Ronner's beautiful Persians play their parts to perfection; but while no one has a right to quarrel with an artist's chosen field, or with the limitations thereof, we cannot help wearying a little of so much softness and luxury, of such perpetual alternations of pastime and sleep. Life has other aspects for a cat of character. The pleasures of the chase in field and barn and cupboard; the excitement of being chased in turn by her ancestral enemy, the dog; the sweet stolen moments of vagabondage; the passionate exaltation of the midnight serenade; the joy of combat; the amorous duplicity of courtship;—what fields of action stretch limitlessly out before a freeborn cat whose hardihood is tempered by discretion,
"Quickened with touches of transporting fear."
Of all these things, Mme. Ronner's darlings, snug in their silken bondage, reveal nothing. But turn to Briton Riviere's spirited "Blockade Runner," in the Tate Gallery of London. See how his cat flattens herself upon the wall along which she scuttles, while the frantic dogs dance helplessly beneath. What concentration of purpose in that swift yet stealthy pace. She lowers her ears, and shortens her legs, and depresses her tail, until she is little more than a moving shadow on the bricks. Hatred fires her heart; terror speeds her on her way. The king in his palace is not more safe than she, yet never for an instant is her vigilance relaxed. She is the inheritor of ancient animosity and of ancient wrongs.
Another and equally admirable view of plebeian cathood is presented in a picture by Claus Meyer, which is one of the gems of the modern gallery in Dresden. Three women sit gossiping in the bare grey sacristy of a church or convent, and three young cats sit near them on the floor;—gutter cats these, rough-coated, scrawny, suspicious from infancy of a dubious world. A shallow dish of milk has been set forth for their refreshment; but only one ventures hesitatingly, and, with her gaze fixed on her companions, to lap a very little. The other two eye each other cautiously from a safe distance. The smallest and raggedest of the group is a mere kitten, all ears and neck after the fashion of its kind, owlish in aspect, and wise with uncanny wisdom. Little
"Cat-gossips full of Canterbury tales,"
and only waiting for matured acquaintance to exchange confidences that will put mere human scandal to the blush, they are all three adorable in their hideousness. To the true lover of the race, shining fur and rounded limbs are not the only charms.
"He that loves a rosy cheek,"
or its feline equivalent, may lose much in the character, the astuteness, the hundred winning and delightful traits that oftenest accompany humble parentage, and a plain little grey and black coat. Many a common puss holds the hearts of a household in her keeping, because of qualities too subtle to be defined, too dominant to be resisted or ignored. When we know just what it is that we value in friend or cat, the analysis blights our affection.
