Animals Entering Noah's Ark

By the late 1500s the Bassano family workshop, in the mainland town of Bassano del Grappa, had turned biblical stories into a reliable business. Its speciality was the crowded farmyard scene, and no subject suited that better than Noah loading the ark. Genesis gave them a reason to fill a canvas with animals two by two: oxen, dogs, poultry and horses packed into a dusky landscape, while the human figures shrink into the background. Pictures like this one, made by the shop rather than the master's own hand, sold across Europe to collectors who wanted a Bassano and cared less which member of the family held the brush. The real draw was the animals, painted with a countryman's eye for how a living beast stands and turns. This canvas carries no signature, so we cannot say which hand in the workshop actually made it.