Cats through Art History

The fame of Russian artist Svetlana Petrova--or rather, her cat Zarathustra--has swept across the internet. Petrova inherited the big orange cat in 2009 from her late mother. She was grieving deeply for her mother when a friend suggested that the process those feelings by using Zarathustra in an art project. Thus arose Fat Cat Art, Petrova's ongoing effort to place her cat in famous works of art, such as Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory.

Petrova prints the results on canvas. The prints, when framed, look convincingly like the originals:

"Sometimes people don't realise it is not the original painting - my friend went to the airport with a gift I gave her of one of the artworks in a museum-style frame and it was very hard for her to prove to customs it wasn't an old painting.

"She tried to explain: 'Do you think an 18th Century painter would really draw cats instead of horses?' She had to scratch it with her nails to show it was printed underneath.

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

American Gothic by Grant Wood

Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David

Sistine Madonna by Raphael

-via Rocket News 24