GUINEA PIG ART

Jan Brueghel, The Feast of Bacchus, c.1640 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; photo by H. Cowie).
Helen Cowie

We may trace the guinea pig’s global career via representations of the animal in art. Jan Brueghel’s The Feast of Bacchus (c.1640) represents two guinea pigs nibbling on a pea pod. Teodor Lubieniecki’s Still Life with Guinea Pigs (late 17th century) depicts two of the animals peering at a basket of fruit, while Albert Eckhout’s portrait of a Brazilian mameluca (1641) has a pair of guinea pigs emerging from the undergrowth. Other notable guinea pig artworks include a miniature by Flemish artist David de Coninck, which features two plump cuyes sniffing a bunch of grapes; Felice Boselli’s Still Life with a Pigeon and Guinea Pig (c.1690) and Jakab Bogdány’s Capuchin Squirrel Monkey, Two Guinea Pigs, a Blue Tit and an Amazon St Vincent Parrot with Peaches, Figs and Pears in a Landscape (1710–20), in which two inquisitive guinea pigs inspect a pear. One portrait of three children by an unknown artist depicts a seven-year-old girl cradling a podgy cuy in her arms, while a boy next to her clutches a bird. Dated around 1580, this is believed to be the oldest English representation of a guinea pig and suggests the early adoption of the animal among elites as a pet. It is notable that in many of these paintings, guinea pigs are portrayed in the act of eating.

Further reading
  • Acosta, J. (2002) Natural and Moral History of the Indies [1589], edited by J. Mangan, translated by F. López-Morillas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
  • Asúa, M., and R. French (2005) A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing).
  • Crosby, A. (1972) The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press).
  • Cumberland, C. (1886) The Guinea Pig, or Domestic Cavy, for Food, Fur and Fancy (London: L. Upcott Gill).
  • Defrance, S. (2006) ‘The sixth toe: the modern culinary role of the guinea pig in southern Peru’, Food and Foodways, 14 (1): 3–34.
  • Few, M., and Z. Tortorici (eds.) (2014) Centering Animals in Latin American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
  • Gade, D. (1967) ‘The guinea pig in Andean folk culture’, Geographical Review, 57 (2): 213–24.
  • Maas, B. (2019) ‘Why more people in Africa should farm guinea pigs for food’, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/why-more-people-in-africa-should-farm-guinea-pigs-for- food-108477.
  • Morales, E. (1994) ‘The guinea pig in the Andean economy: from household animal to market commodity’, Latin American Research Review, 29 (3), 129–42.
  • Parker Brienen, R. (2006) Visions of Savage Paradise: Albert Eckhout, Court Painter in Colonial Dutch Brazil (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
  • Sandweiss, D., and E. Wing (1997) ‘Ritual rodents: the guinea pigs of Chincha, Peru’, Journal of Field Archaeology, 24 (1): 47–58.
  • Yamamoto, D. (2015) Guinea Pig (London: Reaktion Books).