The Fertility of the Egg (Playing animals, and a swaddled dog)
Oil on canvas, by circle of Faustino Bocchi, active late 17th and early 18th century
Private collection

'The Fertility of the Egg' paintings refer to a series of works by an anonymous artist known as the Master of the Fertility of the Egg, who was active in Brescia, Italy, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The name comes from the artist's most famous painting, La fertilità dell' Uovo (The Fertility of the Egg), which is now in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum. This painting depicts a bizarre scene of dwarfs, geese, and lobsters hatching eggs, and it is known for its grotesque and satirical style. Other paintings by this artist share similar themes of fertility, metamorphosis, and the grotesque. They often feature dwarfs, animals, and mythological creatures engaged in strange and sometimes unsettling activities. The artist's identity remains a mystery. Art historians believe that he was probably a follower of the Brescian painter Faustino Bocchi, who is known for his own genre paintings with dwarfs. However, the Master's work is more distinctive than Bocchi's, with its sharper satire and more pronounced sense of the bizarre.