Oil on panel
Pet Portrait in Flemish Strapwork
A double portrait of two cats — Cho-Cho and Moscow — set within an elaborate Flemish strapwork cartouche populated with bats, moths, mice, ravens, and other creatures.
Oil on panel
About this piece
The strapwork cartouche is a hallmark of late 16th-century Flemish decorative painting, found on harpsichord lids, cabinet doors, and the title pages of printed books. Here the form is given new life as the setting for a pet portrait — the cats peering out from the central oval with the unsettling directness that cats alone can manage.
The surrounding cartouche is populated with the creatures one might expect in a Flemish curiosity cabinet: bats hang from the upper register, moths and butterflies drift at the margins, mice perch on the upper shelf, and ravens and small birds occupy the lower corners. Name plaques — 'Cho-Cho' and 'Moscow' — identify the subjects in the manner of a formal portrait.
Painted in oil on panel, the work draws on the tradition of Flemish decorative painting that Adrian Card has spent decades studying and practicing on historical keyboard instruments.