Madonna del gatto

By the 1570s Federico Barocci was working mostly from his home town of Urbino, in central Italy, having retreated there after an illness he blamed on rivals poisoning him in Rome. That quiet, domestic life shaped pictures like this one, painted for a local nobleman, Count Antonio Brancaleoni. Instead of a formal altarpiece it shows the Holy Family in an ordinary bedchamber. The young John the Baptist holds a goldfinch just out of reach of the household cat, while the infant Christ twists round from his mother to watch the game. The tease looks like an everyday scene, but the goldfinch was long read as a sign of the Passion to come. Barocci worked toward this small picture through around 35 surviving drawings.