Fox with Bird of Prey, 1959
Antonio Ligabue orchestrates here a scene of combat between predators with a dramatic power that goes far beyond naturalism. The canvas opens onto a brutal clash: a colossal, meticulously detailed bird of prey strikes down with its taloned feet upon the body of a fox, which twists its muzzle in a piercing cry, jaws wide open in pain. The event, extremely violent, occupies the foreground, while in the background a calm, orderly rural landscape unfolds—an opposition that heightens the sense of cruel urgency.
The bird of prey, imposing, wings spread and plumage minutely worked, dominates the composition both visually and symbolically. Each feather is rendered with energetic, repeated strokes, like a nervous engraving: it is a figure of absolute power, an archetype of predatory force. The fox, by contrast, is depicted in warm tones, its sinuous body conveying both beauty and vulnerability. Its wide, upward-looking gaze is a silent scream that imbues the scene with almost tragic intensity.
The landscape behind is typical of Ligabue: wind-swept wheat fields, houses with red roofs, a village dotted with trees, and a calm blue sky with rounded clouds. There, everything seems still, protected, almost fairy-tale-like. But in the foreground, nature reveals its ferocity, in a dense vegetation that seems to envelop and trap the two animals.
This dual register—harmony and violence—is a recurring key to reading Ligabue’s work, in which nature becomes a metaphor for existence itself, perpetually balanced between beauty and brutality.
Here too, animals become characters, bearers of human emotions and psychological projections. The bird of prey embodies dominance, perhaps an inescapable destiny, while the fox represents fragility and suffering. There is an almost autobiographical quality to this duel: Ligabue, often prey to marginalization and inner pain, seems to transfer onto the canvas the drama of oppression, of the constant struggle to survive and assert one’s existence.
With his customary expressive force, raw mark, and emotional vision of nature, Ligabue constructs a powerful work that is not merely an animal narrative but a parable of the human condition. Fox with Bird of Prey is a painting that wounds, cries out, and shakes us—like a sudden tear in the overly quiet landscape of reality.