500 year old guinea in paper today!!

[guineapiglet]

Hi all
Am on hols and the only newspaper i could get my hands on today is the daily telegraph
On their page 3 is a recently discovered portrait from1585 of a family of three ginger kids , like mine, one holding a massive ginger and white guinea! It is a gorgeous picture. They think it is the first ever portrait of a domestic guinea!! It made my day! :)

Link here - cool! As it says in the piece, they'd have been exotic new imports from the New World.

Awww that portrait was found in Essex (not a million miles from us. My boars are Essex boys too )

I don't trust the way the GP is eyeing the little songbird though.
Did they decide to become vegetarian to make themselves appear all sweet and docile.
Are my boars secretly eye-balling the DC chicken roast dinner ?

I'll bet even 500 years ago, they were judgey

at essex boys!!

You are right 70 it does appear to be eyeing up the throttled songbird with interest... And maybe they were omnivores way back then....perhaps in the wild they dabbled in flesh eating ( shudders).... It is amazing to think that thesr judgey little souls survived a massive sea journey and are still domestic pets 500 years on.... One day they will conquer the world... Just biding their time....

< too much sun and>

From your thread title I thought it was going to be a mummified guinea pig!

It looks judgey enough in the picture. Mine are far too busy conquering the lawn to be bothered with the world. Although Smoothpig is always doing secretive things in his house ........

A fascinating painting. The guinea pig would have been included in the picture to demonstrate how wealthy the family were a stealth boast rather than a show of affection by the children.

What I find interesting is these are Tudor children so would most likely have been protestant. The painting pre-dates the start of the Baroque period by 15 years yet the image shows wealth guinea pig Christianity the bird and mortality i.e. recording the children's likeness in case they didn't all survive.

The point being that the Baroque period was a backlash by the Roman Catholic Church with regard to art.

My other thought taking my arty farty hat off is blimey a Dutch Piggy I wonder if my dearly departed Smartie and Todd could trace their roots back to Tudor times. They were Essex Boys too

Lol it has a hamster face though too big to be a hamster so it's defiantly a guinea pig

guinea pigs don't you just love them? really liked this painting and the story behind it, i bet this piggy had a really good home judging by the childrens' clothes and supposed parental wealth, not keen on the bit about s/america though!