Guinea Fowl and Coati

In 1722 Prince Eugene's Upper Belvedere in Vienna was still going up, and this canvas was painted that year to sit above a door in its dining room. Hamilton filled it with guinea fowl, and the museum points to two unusual birds among them. One is fully albino, snow-white with orange-red wattles. Another is partly albino, with a white breast and pale patches on its speckled wings. The rest wear the usual dark plumage dotted with light spots. Above them, on a carved stone, crouches a coati, a long-snouted relative of the raccoon from the Americas, its ringed tail hanging down beside a bird's head. On the same stone, inside a round frame just below the coati's paws, Hamilton painted his signature and the date.