Cats in Renaissance paintings: where they hide and what they mean

In the six Renaissance cat paintings below, the cat is a small part of a bigger story. It sleeps at a saint's feet, waits beside Judas at the Last Supper, or runs from an angel. For the best-known paintings of the period, with or without cats, see famous Renaissance paintings. The National Gallery in London dates the Renaissance from the 15th century to the end of the 16th century. Each work, and the meaning of its cat, was checked with the museum or public body that looks after it.

Work	Artist	Date the museum gives	Where to see it
Saint Jerome in his Study	Antonello da Messina	the 1470s	National Gallery, London, Room 63
The Last Supper	Domenico Ghirlandaio	after 1485	Museo di San Marco, Florence
Adam and Eve	Albrecht Dürer	1504	The Met, New York
The Annunciation	Lorenzo Lotto	the 1530s	Villa Colloredo Mels civic museum, Recanati
The Last Supper	Jacopo Bassano	ordered in 1546	Galleria Borghese, Rome, Room 15
The Madonna of the Cat	Federico Barocci	the 1570s	National Gallery, London, Room 6

Leonardo da Vinci drew cats from life too: the Royal Collection Trust holds his sheet of more than twenty cats and lions from 1517 to 1518, covered in our guide to famous paintings of cats.

A sleeping cat in a scholar's study

Saint Jerome was a scholar and monk born in the fourth century. The National Gallery says he translated the Bible from Greek into Latin, and that his translation, the Vulgate, is still used by the Catholic Church today.

Antonello da Messina painted him in Venice. The panel is small, 45.7 by 36.2 cm, in oil paint on lime wood. You look in through a stone arch, and the gallery compares the view to a doll's house. On the ledge in front, a partridge stands for truth and a peacock for life that never ends. Jerome's lion, which he befriended in the desert, walks down the aisle behind him.

The cat is easy to miss. In a National Gallery catalogue, the gallery points out a sleeping cat and potted plants on the wooden platform at Jerome's feet, and a towel on a peg. It says these small things show that the study is a living space as well as a place of work.

Cats at the Last Supper: Ghirlandaio and Bassano

The Last Supper is the final meal of Jesus with his apostles. One of them, Judas, betrayed him, and in both of these paintings a cat sits close to Judas.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Museo di San Marco, Florence

Ghirlandaio (1449 to 1494) painted several Last Suppers in a short time. The Museo di San Marco lists one at the Badia a Passignano from 1476, a second at Ognissanti in Florence, and the one at San Marco, painted after he finished another set of wall paintings in 1485. It is a fresco, paint laid on wet plaster, and it is 400 by 810 cm. It covers a wall of the small dining room where guests of the convent ate.

A tabby cat sits in front of the table, next to Judas. Judas has his back to us, wears yellow, has no halo, and is the only one with anything on his feet. The museum says the cat stands for the devil entering Judas and pushing him to betray Jesus. It links the cat to the Gospel of John, where Satan enters Judas after he takes a small piece of food. The museum also points out that Ghirlandaio's devil is a white and grey tabby that could live in any house, and that it looks straight out at the viewer.

Jacopo Bassano, Galleria Borghese, Rome

The Galleria Borghese says the Venetian nobleman Battista Erizzo ordered this Last Supper in 1546 and paid the rest of the price between 1547 and early 1548. Judas sits on the right with his bag of thirty coins, and the cat is at his feet. The museum says the most recent restoration made the cat clear to see. In 1893 the art historian Adolfo Venturi named Bassano as the painter, and he listed "the cat, the dog, the shiny metal basin" as signs of Bassano's love of everyday scenes.

A frightened cat at the Annunciation: Lorenzo Lotto

The Annunciation is the moment the angel Gabriel tells Mary she will be the mother of Jesus. Lorenzo Lotto painted it in oil on canvas, 166 by 114 cm, and it now hangs in the civic museum at Villa Colloredo Mels in Recanati, Italy.

The Marche Region's official tourism site says the painting was first placed in the chapel of the Confraternity of Santa Maria sopra Mercanti, a religious brotherhood of the richest citizens and merchants of Recanati. Mary has stopped reading her prayer book. God the Father breaks into a calm home, shown by everyday objects: a candlestick, a cap, a shawl. The cat runs away in fear, and the site calls it a symbol of evil fleeing from the presence of God.

The Museo di San Marco gives a second reading of cats in 16th-century Annunciations: a sign of the virtues of home life.

A cat and a goldfinch: Barocci's Madonna of the Cat

Federico Barocci's painting shows the holy family in a bedroom of a Renaissance palace. The young John the Baptist holds a goldfinch above the household cat. The baby Jesus turns to watch, Joseph leans in and smiles, and Mary points to the cat, which is ready to pounce.

The National Gallery calls the cat an unusual sight in paintings of the holy family, and explains the game. The goldfinch is a traditional symbol of the Passion, the torture and crucifixion of Christ. By legend, the bird got its red head from a drop of blood as it pulled a thorn from Christ's brow. So the warm family scene carries a serious message about his future sacrifice.

Barocci painted it for Antonio Brancaleoni, Count of Piobbico, and the gallery thinks it was made for his household. The count's coat of arms showed a lion standing on its back legs below a cross, and the gallery says the cat and John's small cross may refer to it.

A cat as a type of person: Dürer's Adam and Eve

Albrecht Dürer, from Nuremberg in Germany, made Adam and Eve in 1504 as an engraving, a print made from lines cut into a metal plate. It is 25.1 by 20 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says four of its animals show the medieval idea of the four temperaments, or four types of human character. The cat is choleric, the type that is quick to anger. The rabbit is sanguine, the ox phlegmatic and the elk melancholic. The Met's page lists the print as not on view, so check before you visit.

What the cats meant, according to the museums

The six works give the cat at least five jobs:

• The devil. Ghirlandaio's cat beside Judas. The Museo di San Marco says that in the Middle Ages many Europeans saw the cat as a creature of the devil.
• Evil running from God. Lotto's frightened cat.
• Home life. Antonello's sleeping cat, and cats in Annunciations.
• A hunter. Barocci's cat, ready to pounce on the goldfinch.
• A type of person. Dürer's choleric cat.

The Museo di San Marco adds one more: in some 16th-century paintings, a cat sits beside a learned saint to guard the books from hungry mice. The National Gallery says cats have long been kept in homes to control mice and rats, and that before the 18th century European artists rarely painted them as lap pets. The gallery also says black cats were linked with witches, an idea from a Roman myth in which a priestess of Hecate, goddess of the underworld, became a cat.

A Renaissance cat portrait of your own cat

The paintings above keep the cat inside a bigger story. A royal pet portrait makes your own cat the sitter.

Purrealism offers a Renaissance Royal style among its six European period styles, out of 15 royal portrait styles in all. The gallery shows three cats, all in Indian court styles: a white and ginger Maharani, a grey Mughal emperor and a ginger cat in a red and gold robe. A finished Renaissance Royal portrait is not in the gallery yet. To compare styles first, our guide on how to choose a royal portrait style goes through all 15.

You pick the style in the portrait studio and add one clear photo of your cat, saved as an image file of up to 5 MB. Ghirlandaio's cat looks straight at the viewer, and a photo taken at your cat's eye level, with its eyes on the camera, does the same. Our guide on how to photograph your pet for a portrait covers the photo step by step. The finished portrait comes as a digital pack or as an art print in 8 × 10, 12 × 16, 18 × 24 or 24 × 36 inches, on matte or glossy paper.