“Man with Parrot” (circa 1540), a work by Niccolò dell’Abbate. The portrait is housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
In Vienna, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, there hangs a painting. Created by Niccolò dell’Abbate, an Italian, around the mid-1540s, it is an oil on canvas. What do we see? A man. He appears young, yet his gaze is ancient. He wears a hat adorned with a white feather and dark, very dark clothing, except for the white collar and cuffs. He sits beside a table, and on the table is a bird, a striking red parrot. The man gazes beyond us. And beyond the parrot. He looks outside the painting, to the left, as if considering something else or someone else—perhaps the painter himself, or maybe no one at all. His right hand rests slowly on the table. However, his left hand holds a fruit, which he seems to offer to the bird, or perhaps to take away. This ambiguity of the hand, the lack of clarity, permeates the entire painting. Everything flows here, even though all appears still. The parrot alone seems animated, while the man resembles a statue.
The Averted Gaze and the Red Witness: A Scene of Absurdity
Many artists depict people looking directly at us. They invite us into their world. However, the man in Abbate’s painting takes a different path. He dismisses us with his silence. His gaze, directed elsewhere, creates a space we cannot enter, an invisible gap between us and the image, and in that space lies the true scene, the thing he sees that we do not. And what is behind? A heavy green curtain. And within the darkness, faintly, perhaps a garden or another painting. Unclear. Everything here remains vague, except for the melancholy.
The Parrot as a Symbolic Key
So, the parrot. Bright red. Many say that parrots symbolize wealth or exotic knowledge, as they came from India and were sold for a high price. Yet to me, it signifies something different. This parrot is the only living being in the painting, transcending the mere notion of a symbol. Do you see its head? It leans toward the man’s hand, toward the fruit. The man, like a corpse in his dark garments, cold as stone, while the parrot embodies life itself, a simple desire—to eat. Perhaps this is all the painter intended to convey: the contrast between cold wealth, gazing into the unseen, and the warm, small life, which seeks only the fruit. The hand in between. Does it give or take? Uncertain.
