The Blogger’s Eye

At the Met recently. A nice little detail of a woodblock print by Lucas Cranac the Elder (1472-1553): his emblem was a dragon with a ring in its mouth, looking here like a lip piercing. Tiny. The motif was part of his coat-of-arms. While enjoying the exuberance of Jacob Vosmaer’s c. 1613 “Vase of Flowers,” which somebody somewhen sliced off at the top, I noticed in the lower right corner a lizard. Not that there’s a theme to this post. Now, here’s a substantial section of Jan Weenix’s “Gamepiece with Heron” (a.k.a. “Falconer’s Bag”) of 1695. To take a heron, the falcon in question must have been bigger than a Peregrine, perhaps a Gyrfalcon or something imported from the Middle East. The French term for still life, of which this is an example of the country, or hunting, variety, is the spot-on nature morte, dead nature.But back to the living…at least for the short term. This pet Magpie, being held on a string by the young Manuel de Zuniga, is holding Goya’s calling card in its beak. The subject, who was painted c. 1788, lived only to his 8th year, making this famous image, with its beady-eyed cats eyeing the bird, traditionally a symbol of the soul, rather poignant. Goya himself, the wily magpie, survived into his 80s.