(active in the second half of the 17th Century)
The tale of the Monkey and Cat,
oil on canvas, 122 x 170 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Madrid;

where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Gianni Papi for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a digital photograph and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

This painting is by an, as yet unidentified, anonymous master for whom Gianni Papi, in 2011, grouped together a series of works under the moniker the Master of the Armenti (see G. Papi, Il Maestro di Baranello, fra Salini e Napoli, in: Bulletin de l’association des historiens de l’Art italien, no. 17, 2011, pp. 10-23). The moniker of the Master of the Armenti was chosen with reference to a painting representing a Shepherd with sheep and goats, published as by Tommaso Salini by Viktoria Markova (see V. Markova, Alcune nuove proposte per Tommaso Salini, in: Paragone, no. 475, 1989, pp. 26-41).

A number of works by the Master of the Armenti had been previously assigned to Tommaso Salini, especially in 1989 by Victoria Markova (op. cit.) and Mina Gregori (see M. Gregori, Altre aggiunte a Tommaso Salini, in: Paragone, no. 475, 1989, pp. 52-57). Subsequently Franco Paliaga attempted to apply order to Tommaso Salini’s corpus from which he grouped some canvases and assigned them to a personality whom he named Pseudo Salini (see F. Paliaga, Sui dipinti di genere con animali vivi attribuiti a Tommaso Salini, in: Atti delle Giornate di Studi sul Caravaggismo e il Naturalismo nella Toscana del Seicento, ed. by P. Carofano, Pontedera 2009, pp.117-144). Then, Gianni Papi, in his 2011 article (op. cit.), suggested another name for this master, as in his opinion the paintings assigned to Pseudo Salini were by more than one painter and thereby introduced the name of the Master of the Armenti.

The present painting is, according to Papi, among the finest works of the Master of the Armenti group; it belongs to a parallel group of production representing pastoral themes. This group includes genre scenes representing children at play with domestic animals. Many of these paintings specifically depict the so-called subject of ‘taking chestnuts from the fire’ [‘togliere castagne dal fuoco’] such as seen in the present work where a cat and a monkey are engaged in this task. There are at least another three works that depict this subject with iconographic variants: the Children at play with a monkey, a cat and a duck which was with Colnaghi; another, sold at auction: Christie’s New York (26 January 2011, lot 157 as attributed to Salini) and a third that was with Partridge Fine Art, London, in 2008, wherein the human protagonist were, as in the Colnaghi painting, a youth and a girl. The monkey occurs in still other paintings, such as the Cook with copper objects, a child and a chained monkey which was with the Lasson Gallery, London, in 1967, and the Farmer making a monkey look in a mirror from a private collection. A monkey also occurs in another painting, the Interior scene with a youth, a chained monkey, various birds and two cats which is documented in a private collection at Bergamo, and which is of notably inferior pictorial quality, thus confirming the fact that in this group there are several artists of varied talent at work on similar subjects.

Paliaga (op. cit.) suggested a regional source for these representations pointing to the areas of Genoa and Venice as most likely. These works depict male and female figures, flocks of animals, birds and farm animals as well as cats, dogs and monkeys and they represented a highly successful theme, likely produced by several hands over the course of several decades, beginning around the mid-seventeenth century. The Master of the Armenti was certainly the leading author of these works, and certainly he achieved the most startling quality.

The cat and the monkey, with the latter forcing the former to burn himself in the act of taking the chestnuts from the fire, are the protagonists of a short story by La Fontaine from which this scene takes inspiration and was sourced on several occasions by the Master of the Armenti. Indeed, the fable of the Monkey and the cat (Bernalda and Topolone) is contained in book nine of the French author’s Fables published in 1679. Thus, pointing to a close tie with the time La Fontaine’s book entered circulation, and so to a late date for the painter’s production. However, it cannot be excluded that the subject of this story was already known before the definitive arrangement of the collection published in 1679.