Attributed to Felice Boselli

A cat turns up in painting after painting by Felice Boselli, and scholars read it as a punning signature, since felis is Latin for cat and his first name echoes it. In his self-portrait of around 1720, now in the National Gallery in Parma, a cat sits on his shoulder while he paints.

Boselli was born in Piacenza in 1650, trained with the Lombard painter Michelangelo Nuvolone, and spent his career in the duchy of Parma and Piacenza. He painted still lifes of game, fish, poultry and live animals in thick paint for the dining rooms of country estates, working for local noble families such as the Sanvitale counts of Fontanellato. He died in Parma in 1732.

The Belvedere's Hunting Still Life with a Cat is undated and unsigned, and the museum lists it as attributed to Boselli with a question mark, so the name here is a proposal. The painting came to the museum in 2020 as a gift from the Maurer collection in Vienna.