The Ray

In Chardin's The Ray, a gutted stingray hangs above a kitchen table. Its pale underside grins out at the viewer. The critic Denis Diderot called it a terrifying face that looked almost human, pleading for mercy. It is not sentimental. It is a specific anatomical fact of stingrays: the mouth and gill-slits on the belly make an accidental face. Chardin used this canvas as his admission piece to the French Académie in 1728. They accepted him on the strength of it. At the front left of the table, a startled kitchen cat has just walked into a bowl of oysters. Now at Louvre, Paris @museelouvre