Still life with turkey, guinea pigs and pigeons

In a barn-like setting, a large turkey presides over a pair of Guinea pigs and a couple of ‘slippered’ pigeons, with their clutch of chicks. The distinctive character of each animal is closely observed: the ungainly mother pigeon, who tends her squawking hatchlings, the Guinea pigs who nibble nervously together and the turkey who meets the viewer’s gaze with an air of great calm. A disarray of straw and foliage camouflages the contrivance of the grouping, which includes an artfully placed wooden pail, a rush basket and a tilted earthenware bowl. This theatre of rusticity was a speciality of Venetian painter Giovanni Agostino Cassana, whose Flemish-inspired animal pictures were much appreciated by the Italian aristocracy and European collectors in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

While the turkey, the Guinea pig and the pigeon seem commonplace today, they would have commanded the interest of connoisseurs as relative novelties in the late 17th century. The Guinea pig or Cavia Porcello d’India, as it was known in Italy, and the wild turkey were introduced from the New World in the 16th century. The pigeons with feathered feet (muffs or slippers) might be Ascolano pigeons from Emilia-Romagna, predecessors of the modern Romagnolos, or they may be examples of the fancy Indian pigeons bred by the Mughals. By the 17th century all had become utilitarian household animals, joining the ranks of rabbits and dormice, that could be fattened at low cost for the Italian table.

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