The Monkey and the Cat (probably 1670s): Art, History and Details

The Monkey and the Cat (probably 1670s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Abraham Hondius (Dutch, c. 1625–1695).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This picture interprets one of Aesop’s ancient Greek fables (or probably the more contemporary interpretation by Jean de la Fontaine, even more famous at the time), which warns of the dangers of flattery. A monkey sweet-talks a cat into pulling scalding chestnuts out of the fire. The cat finishes the risky and painful task to discover that the monkey has already gobbled up nearly all of them.

Object facts

• Title: The Monkey and the Cat
• Date: probably 1670s
• Creator attribution: Abraham Hondius (Dutch, c. 1625–1695)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 80 x 93.5 x 6 cm (31 1/2 x 36 13/16 x 2 3/8 in.); Unframed: 62.2 x 73.7 cm (24 1/2 x 29 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1979.82

Collection credit

Gift of The Butkin Foundation

Further reading listed by the museum

• Norman A. Sugarman, letter to Sherman Lee, Aug. 29, 1979, in CMA curatorial file.
• Harry Judson Moore, phone conversation with Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 13, 2014.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.