Due fanciulli che tormentano un gatto

In Bologna around 1590 the young Annibale Carracci was pushing painting back toward things seen with his own eyes, and this is one of the earliest Italian pictures to take an ordinary domestic moment as its whole subject. Two children, faces bright with cruel delight, pinch a cat with the claws of a crayfish. There is no myth here and no saint, only the small everyday cruelty of childhood, caught with real speed and directness. It may nod at a proverb about leaving well enough alone. The cat's ears are already flat. In a decade Annibale would be in Rome frescoing the grand ceiling of the Palazzo Farnese, but here he is simply watching two kids and an animal that has had enough.