Domestic poultry and rabbit

The turkey at the centre of this farmyard is a bird from Mexico. The Spanish brought domesticated turkeys to Europe in the early 1500s, and within a few decades they had spread to Italy, France and England. By the time Tamm painted this, around 1706, the turkey was a familiar sight in any well-kept poultry yard, and he gives it the place of honour, its tail spread in a wide pale fan. Around it hens peck at the ground and drink from a stone basin, a black-and-white bird stands on the rock behind, and in front sits a white rabbit with a sprig of green in its mouth. Tamm had learned his trade in Rome, where the society of Dutch and Flemish painters, the Schildersbent, nicknamed him Dapper. Emperor Leopold I then called him to Vienna as a court painter.