Hunting Still Life with a Cat

In 2020, a year when Austria's museums kept having to close, the Belvedere received the largest gift in its recent history. Ingeborg and Wolfgang Maurer handed over almost 800 objects, from late medieval pieces to Baroque paintings, clocks and weapons, and this small canvas came with them. It is recorded in Vienna in 1945, in the estate of Robert Maurer. The museum lists it as attributed to Felice Boselli, with a question mark, since it carries neither signature nor date. On a stone ledge lies a heap of shot birds, several with long, thin bills. A brown cat has climbed up behind the pile and stares out at us, tail raised. From the edge of the canvas a brown-and-white hunting dog pushes in its head and looks up at the cat. The picture now hangs in the Upper Belvedere.