eighteenthcenturyfiction:

femme-de-lettres:

Large (Wikimedia)

After yesterday, I figured I’d better reassure you that—really—some cat art isn’t unbearably silly.

This, for example, is Giuseppe Maria Crespi’s The Kitchenmaid, from the early 18th century.

According to the Getty, “Crespi’s work reflects his sincerity, tenderness, and keen observation of nature, transformed by startling light effects and thick, fluid application of paint.”

The glowing brilliance of the kitchenmaid herself and the soft little cat on the chair uphold the Getty’s claim.

There’s something kind of unusual about the style, though.

And indeed, The Encyclopædia Britannica writes that Crespi was an “Italian Baroque painter who broke dramatically with the formal academic tradition to achieve a direct and immediate approach to his subject matter that was unparalleled at the time.”

Never has a rebel looked so endearingly quaint.

Cats in art. This is what the internet is for, right?