Guinea pigs in paintings (in the low countries)

Slaves visited the newly re-opened Mauritshuis a while ago.
This is a museum gallery in the Hague in the Netherlands which has many portraits of Dutch and Flemish masters from the Dutch Golden Age. Masters in painting, not per se masters to Guinea pigs ;) One of the most famous paintings there is 'The girl with the pearl earring' by Johannes Vermeer.

It was there that their friend pointed out these Guinea pigs in a painting by Brueghel and Rubens depicting 'Adam and Eve in paradise'. There are many animals surrounding Adam and Eve, two of those are Guinea pigs! Brueghel and Rubens were totally right when depicting some of our kind, of course we were there in paradise!

Being the Guinea pig enthusiast as she is our slave (@pandameisje) was tweeting that Rubens and Brueghel were absolutely right in depicting guinea pigs in paradise! With this picture attached

We were totally surprised when we got a reply of Peter Paul Rubens (the painter himself, of course he no longer lives so his account is managed by someone acting in his name)

Tweet by Peter Paul Rubens informing us Guinea pigs were his friend Jan Brueghel (the elder)'s signature creatures!

So apparently Brueghel the elder used guinea pigs quite often. Of course this made our slave curious and she did some research online.

She found an article about the first archeological find of a guinea pig in the netherlands, mentioning Brueghel using guinea pigs in his paintings. In the first painting (The garden of eden with the fall of men) the guinea pigs looked really unrealistic, which was probably because Brueghel had used a stuffed and badly mounted guinea pig. Not sure what that means, but it sounds nasty... 

According to the article there were other painters from the low countries who painted guinea pigs. Both Rubens and Brueghel had acces to the menagerie of the archdukes of Brussels, where they probably saw their first live guinea pigs.

Slave also found this site which lists lots of paintings (many by Brueghel the elder) and other art works depicting guinea pigs.

Have you ever seen a painting with guinea pigs in it?

By the way, if you ever visit the Netherlands, slave says be sure to visit this museum, it is a good size and has loads of gorgeous and fairly well known paintings. And let us know if you need a piggy fix, we live in The Hague...

The Guinygirlz: Woopy, Daisy, Roos, and Bérke