The white Peacock

This 1693 work at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna depicts a white peacock — a rare albino variant of the already prestigious peacock — in Weenix's characteristic format of an exotic bird displayed against a park or estate setting. Peacocks, already symbols of vanity, immortality, and aristocratic display in European visual culture, were kept in the gardens of grand houses as living ornaments, and the white peacock was a remarkable collector's specimen. Weenix's decision to paint one in 1693 likely responded to a specific owner's pride in possessing such a bird. The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna holds this work as part of a collection that includes the famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych, and the Weenix occupies a different but equally specialist niche — the prestigious animal painting of the Baroque period at its most refined. Vienna's Habsburg collections were natural homes for this type of imperial luxury imagery.

The white peacock presents an even greater challenge than the white swan: a large, plumed bird whose colour is almost entirely absent of hue. Weenix resolves this by introducing warm reflected light from the landscape into the bird's plumage, using ochre and pale gold alongside the whites and cool greys. The tail feathers, even white, retain their characteristic eye-pattern in subtle tone-on-tone variations. The lush garden setting provides the chromatic richness the bird's white plumage cannot supply.