Public Domain
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
The painting is signed and dated 1732 and measures 189 × 253 cm; the museum measures its frame at 223 × 285 × 15 cm, and files the work under animals. It keeps the title in two languages — Lejonet och spindeln in Swedish and The Lion and the Fly in English.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755) trained in Paris under Nicolas de Largillierre, was received into the Académie royale in 1719, and worked for the French court as a painter of the royal hunt; from 1734 he directed the tapestry manufactory at Beauvais and from 1743 that of the Gobelins, and he is remembered above all for his paintings of animals. He made a celebrated series of illustrations after La Fontaine’s Fables. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.