Still Life with Huntsman

A huntsman has just come in and is lifting a hare toward a hook. The rest of the day's bag is already on the table, game birds, a turkey and the head of a boar, among grapes, melons, artichokes and a cauliflower. Down at the edge a cat reaches up for the turkey's dangling head. The Mauritshuis names Frans Snyders alone as the painter, huntsman included, and dates the canvas to around 1615 in Antwerp.

It reached The Hague much later. In 1768 Prince William V of Orange bought the entire collection of the Hague collector Govert van Slingelandt, and this picture came with it. When French armies entered the Dutch Republic in 1795, they confiscated the prince's paintings and sent them to the Louvre. The Snyders came back after Napoleon's fall in 1815 and has belonged to the Mauritshuis since 1822. It now hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V, the prince's own picture gallery on the Buitenhof.