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Paintings of dead animals became a distinct and popular sub‐genre in seventeenth‐century European still‐life painting, and particularly in Dutch and Flemish painting. The seventeenth century was also the time of one of the most vigorous debates on the characteristics of animals and the possibility of moral duties toward them. The main reference point in this debate was the Cartesian theory of the ‘beast‐machine’, which viewed animals as senseless automata. The present study examines dead‐animal painting in the context of this debate. Such paintings are considered by and large as expressing an anti‐Cartesian view of animals. However, the result is not an interpretation of them as pro‐animal statements. Rather, they are interpreted as reflecting the general Western anthropocentric attitude toward animals.
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