Fox and cat

A fox has caught a hare and turns its head. Up in the tree a cat hisses down at it, her kittens left at the foot of the trunk, and around them are a monkey, two squirrels and two ermines. The Prado's catalogue of 1857 describes that scene almost word for word, and the museum files the picture among fables, where the fox with a bag of tricks meets the cat who knows one trick, which is to get up a tree. The crown could never settle whose painting it was. The Buen Retiro inventory of 1772 gives it to Pedro de Vos. In 1794 a clerk wrote the painter's name as Sneires. In 1814 it is de Vos again, and by the museum's catalogue of the 1850s it is Sneyders. The Prado dates the canvas no closer than the 16th to 17th century and keeps it in store. The name F. Snyders stands in black in the lower right corner, listed among the inscriptions rather than as a signature.