Michael Schnitzler (Johann Michael Schnitzler) is a German painter who is very little known, with few details available about either his biography or artistic journey. However, upon examining the works he left behind, it becomes apparent that he was a great German painter with an extremely fine and precise brushstroke. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and becomes a painter for theater sets, primarily working in Munich but also in other cities in Germany. He also works in the service of princes, including Maximilian the 1st of Bavaria (1756-1825), who enlists the painter to decorate his palace in Nymphenburg. It is in this context that Michael Schnitzler realizes his very large painting depicting Birds from the Menagerie of Nymphenburg, which is now housed in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich (WAF 967).

Michael Schnitzler specializes in still life paintings, leaving behind some magnificent examples. The present painting, depicting a dead duck supported by its left wing accompanied by various dead birds of the countryside, is a worthy representative of Michael Schnitzler's art. It shows the meticulous brushstroke, the attention to color, and the treatment of light reflecting on the duck's neck, as well as the highly detailed work on rendering different types of feathers. Furthermore, it is evident that the composition is an allusion to Albrecht Dürer, whom Michael Schnitzler paraphrases both to inscribe himself within the history of German art and to detach himself from the master and create his own formula: the way the duck's left wing is wide open and occupies the vast majority of the composition space recalls the splendid Wing of a blue roller that Albrecht Dürer drew around 1500 (or 1512?), and which is now housed in the Albertina Museum in Vienna (inv. 4840).