The Floating Feather

The real title of this picture names a pelican and other birds by a pool, but people have always called it after the single white feather drifting on the water at the bottom. Around 1680 Melchior d'Hondecoeter painted it for the stadtholder William of Orange, the Dutch ruler who would sail to England in 1688 and be crowned king there. William kept a menagerie of exotic birds at his palace of Het Loo, and Hondecoeter was the man hired to record them. A pelican, a cassowary, a flamingo and a crowned crane gather at the pool. Unlike other bird painters of his day, who mostly showed dead game as trophies, he gave his birds real movement and life.