Art FUR art's sake: Russian artist recreates famous paintings… featuring her very fat cat


Artist Svetlana Petrova must have been feline funny when she decided to recreate some of the world's finest paintings - with her cat in them.

Portly moggy Zarathustra is now immortalised in works by some of the great artists including Botticelli, Dali, Da Vinci and Monet.

Artist Svetlana got the idea after friends told her her ginger cat was so funny she ought to use him in her work.

No wonder she's smiling: Leonardo's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, on the left, and Svetlana Petrova's fat ginger moggy being cuddled on the right



She took some photographs of Zarathustra, who has a natural tendency to pose, and used a computer to put him in the art.

The hilarious results have now become an internet sensation through the blog 'Great Artist's Mews', but according to Svetlana the art establishment has pooh-poohed her.

Works that the cat now appears in include The Mona Lisa by Da Vinci, Rembrandt's Danae and The Judgement of Paris by Peter Paul Rubens.

The artist, from St Petersburg in Russia, said the cat belonged to her late mother and the family has had a history of owning performing felines.

Spot the difference: The famous Venus and an Organist and cupid by Titian in all its glory (left) and with natural born model Zarathustra (right)



Classic: Monet's 1886 work Haystack at Giverny is a much-loved Impressionist masterpiece is on show at The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia

Clawed Monet: Haystack at Giverny with an extra cat in it, replacing the haystack Svetlana said: 'A year ago my friend said that my cat was so funny I should use him in my art. 'I thought, why not, it will amuse me, and I began to think what I could do. 'I thought that maybe I could do a photo session with food, in the style of an old Dutch still life.

Purr-iceless work of art: Vodkin Spring painted by Russian artist Kuzma Petrov in 1935 (left) and improved with Svetlana's cat (right)



The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, again with Zarathustra thrust into it Brush strokes: Pallas and the Centaur by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, circa 1482, pictured left and with the ginger tom right



'To imagine how it would look I decided to Photoshop the cat into a painting and it was Rembrandt's Danae. It looked good so I carried on doing them.

'Zarathustra is a natural born model. He adores adopting different poses, sometimes very feminine and coquettish, and makes different faces.

'Then I started to do special photo sessions having in mind paintings which I wanted to PhotoShop.

'It is the most difficult and longest part of work because he must be in the right position, with the correct expression, and sometimes it takes months to take the right photo.

Fur-realist masterpiece: Salvador DalÌ's Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee already had two big cats in it, now it has two big fat cats in the shape of two images of Zarathustra

Can in the hat: Philip IV on Horseback by Diego Velazquez with and without Svetlana's cat (right) and the pair pictured together (left)



'I thought that I could hold an exhibition, but gallery owners said: "This is not art, this is just cats".

'I asked: "Why is a shark in the formaldehyde art, but and a cat in a classic painting is not art?"

'Nobody could give me an answer, and these people began to avoid me saying that I am mad.'

Various names: Diego Velázquez's Venus At Her Mirror is also known as the Rokeby Venus, The Toilet Of Venus, Venus And Cupid, or La Venus del espejo

Mirror image: Petrova's attention to detail, the reflection in the mirror, is the punchline to this 'masterpiece'