Two Children Teasing a Cat by Annibale Carracci in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2019

Two Children Teasing a Cat


Object Details

Artist: Annibale Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1560–1609 Rome)

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 26 x 35 in. (66 x 88.9 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Purchase, Gwynne Andrews Fund, and Bequests of Collis P. Huntington and Ogden Mills, by exchange, 1994

Accession Number: 1994.142


Viewers of this painting are invited to imagine the result of teasing an obviously unhappy cat (you can almost hear its growl). For surely the little girl’s hand will be scratched. The painting thus incorporates a time factor and carries a lesson similar to “Let sleeping dogs lie” and “Don’t go poking around vipers.” Painted with a directness and spontaneity that look forward to nineteenth-century art, this painting is among the earliest Italian genre paintings. It belonged to Cardinal Tommaso Ruffo (1663–1753), who also owned Velázquez’s Juan de Pareja.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435852