Study of Two Brazilian Tortoises

Two red-footed tortoises face each other with their heads stretched out and their mouths open. The museum explains the scene. Males grunt and square up like this in the breeding season. Eckhout painted them in Brazil in 1640, in tempera and gouache on a sheet of paper that was later mounted on panel.

He recorded the scaly heads and the patterned plates of the shells closely, and then took one liberty. He gave both animals rows of sharp teeth, and tortoises have none.

The sheet probably belonged to Johan Maurits, the governor who employed him, but the painter's name got lost along the way. When the Amsterdam dealer Jacques Goudstikker catalogued it in 1936, it was listed as the work of an anonymous master, and it was still called anonymous in a Dutch private collection in 1955. The Friends of the Mauritshuis Foundation bought it at Sotheby's in London in 1963, and it has been on loan to the museum ever since.