A Curious Scene

This painting shows a curious scene with animals and other fantastical beasts making music, conversing, or attacking each other from flying baskets, as well as a dancing skeleton, and two figures passing a bowl.

The painting is inscribed and dated lower right on the skeleton's flag (strengthened): OPERA / NOVA / CURIOSA / 1695.

The still unidentified master of the painting, a follower of the Brescian painter Faustino Bocchi, is called The Master of the Fertility of the Egg after a painting now in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Motifs often used by this master are lobsters, baskets, swords, wheelbarrows, and the inscription on a small flag.