Dog with Prey

After Carlos II died in 1700, the officials who inventoried the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid wrote this canvas down as a dog, half a kid, a monkey and other odds and ends, by a painter named de Vos. That name stayed on it for more than a century. It turns up as a Snyders only in the list drawn up in 1834, when the royal pictures were being gathered into the museum. The Prado dates it no more precisely than the first half of the 17th century. The old Spanish catalogue description still works as a guide to looking at it. A big dog has taken hold of a dead lamb, a second comes at it barking, a third small one hangs back and watches, and on the far side of the table a monkey has climbed up onto a chair, above the lemons, oranges, artichokes and white asparagus.