Conseil tenu par les Rats (Council Held by the Rats), from Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, II, 2,

1733

The court painter and tapestry designer Jean Baptiste Oudry was celebrated during his lifetime for his skill in depicting animals. Among Oudry’s greatest achievements was his series of drawings for Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables—an influential literary work that relied on classical sources, including Aesop, while adding a new moral and intellectual perspective. In the late 1750s, La Fontaine’s Fables was republished with engravings after Oudry’s drawings. This drawing illustrates a fable in which a terrifying tomcat wages war against rats until they huddle underground, starving, rather than venture out for food. When the cat leaves to go courting, the rats convene to determine how to handle the beast, but none volunteer to take action. Perhaps a rebuke of participatory government, La Fontaine’s fable has been interpreted as an allusion to the might of Louis XIV. Oudry’s cat is a domestic feline gone feral—a warning to readers against letting their pets, or their leaders, become too wild.