Dogs are known for their fidelity. But what about the fidelity of drawings and paintings that depict them?
The oldest known cave depictions of dogs can be found in today’s Saudi Arabia: they are petroglyphs, or carvings made in rock. It is estimated they are around eight thousand years old. They were created in an era when what is modern-day Arabia was inhabited by tribes of hunter-gatherers that domesticated the dog, or, really, the wolf. Images found on rocks around the cities of Jubbah and Shuwaymis in the northwest of the country show dogs accompanying archers. And, because tey’ve survived up to modern day, we are able to see hunting scenes from thousands of years ago.
These images of dogs are surprisingly lifelike. We can see diverse specimens of the species: small and large individuals. Lifted tails may indicate happiness or excitement, and their shape signals which breed they might conceivably represent. The silhouette of the rock dog resembles that of the Canaan dog—of average size, similar to a spitz. It originates from pariah (semi-wild) dogs and was bred in Israel. The animal’s overall silhouette also attests to the similarity to pariah dogs: well-shaped hindquarters, lifted withers, an elongated but blunt muzzle, erect triangular ears. Pariah dogs still live in southwest Asia and northern Africa, and the Canaan dog shares many of their characteristics, including when it comes to temperament (mistrust, gregariousness and endurance are all traits they possess).
It’s difficult to say why the artist from millennia ago also immortalized the penises of the hunters and most of the dogs, but we may surmise that the group’s overall mood is joyous and excited. Perhaps the hunter’s erection symbolizes his potency and agency. The bow is drawn, so game is somewhere near; in a moment, once the archer lets loose his arrow, the dogs will set off in pursuit of the wounded prize. Some are on leashes, others are running free. The leashes are wrapped around the Neolithic hunter’s hips, which means that some of his companions are not fit for hunting—perhaps they’re still learning how from other members of the pack. It’s striking that, after years, we can still notice the canine coloring: spots on their rumps, sides, and paws.
Although the carvings are, after all, an arrangement of indistinct grooves set into rock, and show an event thousands of years in the past, it seems that man and the pack of dogs are connected here by something beyond just a leash and the hunt. These “happy” lifted tails attest to that—according to breeders, the tail is the dog’s “heart” and signals its feelings. The close distance between the dog and its companion also indicates a bond. People simply got to like dogs from the very beginning of the domestication process. Professor Robert Losey found dog burials in Siberia, ones with complete skeletons buried—it would seem—with respect, even a certain sense of ceremony. These could be burials of pets belonging to Neolithic Siberian hunters. However, some finds also had broken bones, which may suggest that dogs could have been eaten by the first hunters and breeders.
Another depiction of a hunting dog was created six thousand years later, on a bowl from the Amratian culture which developed in Upper Egypt. The dog belonged to an extinct breed called tesem, considered to be the point of origin of sighthounds. In surviving depictions, the only way a tesem differs from a sighthound is the ears: they are erect, like a Great Dane’s, but in other Egyptian images we can see them hanging down too, precisely like in sighthounds, or in dogs from a breed called saluki, also often depicted on Egyptian statues, vessels, pyramids, and wall paintings. Other breeds we find in Egyptian art are mastiffs, the above-mentioned pariah dogs and greyhounds.
Guardians and Gods
Extensive research has shown that in cultures on the Nile, dogs symbolized the journey from the world of the living to the world of the dead. The Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis, had the head of a jackal, or sometimes a canine body, as evidenced by hieroglyphs. Anubis was a dog deity who protected the graves of Egyptians from jackals, but also accompanied the dead in their last journey to the underworld. One of his names means “he who is at the place of embalming.” The Egyptian Book of the Dead shows him with scales—Anubis weighed people’s hearts after their deaths to decide whether the deceased may enter the kingdom of Osiris.
For ancient Greeks, the gateway to the underworld was guarded by another dog—the three-headed Cerberus, carefully painted onto vases, amphorae, bowls and hydriai, or water vessels. On these, we often see Cerberus in the moment of being caught by Heracles; it was one of the twelve labors which the hero had to undertake as punishment for murdering his own family. Cerberus made sure that none of the dead got out of Hades, and no living souls wandered there either. The canine watchman became so entrenched in human imagination that he was depicted in many subsequent eras, for example by Peter Paul Rubens (Hercules and Cerberus, 1636) and William Blake (Cerberus, one of the illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy, 1824-1827). Antiquity’s most famous dog returns in many variants also in contemporary culture: in the Harry Potter novels as the three-headed Fluffy, or in Rick Riordan’s books (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief).
Greek art features sculptures of dogs guarding entrances to homes and temples; we see them on reliefs of plinths and stelae, and even on fibulae, or decorative pins. Among all these depictions, eminent Greek mythology experts are able to locate Argos—Odysseus’ dog, the only one to recognize his owner after many years of separation—or the white dog from the origin myth of the temple of Heracles. According to the story, when an Athenian called Didymos was performing a sacrifice to the gods, a white dog appeared and snatched the meat. Didymos built a temple for Heracles in the place where the dog buried the meat. Of course, apart from mythical dogs, the ancients also had normal lapdogs and hunting hounds.
Columella, a Roman writer on agriculture from the first century AD, wrote in volume six of his work De re rustica that it is best if a guard dog is black, large and has a loud voice. It should also drive intruders away with its appearance, but be gentle towards the members of the household. This is exactly like the animal depicted on a mosaic at the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, the Roman villa destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The villa was excavated in the nineteenth century; archeologists were overjoyed to discover a well-preserved tiled floor with an image of a black dog and the words cave canem (beware of the dog). Apparently, similar images featured in many Roman villas of the era. But Romans did not only value guard dogs. During their wars, the Germanic and Gallic peoples would sometimes set huge, armored mastiffs on the Romans, who, with time, adopted that habit from the barbarians. Thousands of dogs served in Roman legions, and we can find them in the art celebrating Roman military conquest.
A Symbol of Attachment
In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the dog symbolized attachment to God and to marital fidelity. We can find a dog in that latter role in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434), but also many other paintings, for example Jan Massijs’ David and Bathsheba, painted a hundred years later (1562). Experts on the Arnolfinis’ famous portrait are in disagreement about the meaning of the details in the painting, but one thing is certain: the dog evokes the merchant couple’s wealth, as van Eyck presents them at their best. In the Renaissance, dogs—usually greyhounds—were regularly depicted during hunts. We can see them, for example, in Paolo Uccello’s The Hunt in the Forest (around 1465): a night scene where dozens of greyhounds run around amongst the horses.
A dog could also be an important supplement to portraits of rulers and influential figures. It is seen next to Charles V in a Titian painting and many artists from later eras seemingly emulated this sort of imagery, for example Diego Velázquez, author of the work Philip IV in Hunting Dress, or Francisco Goya in his depiction of Charles III. But art history mainly shows dogs as companions in plays, as pets or even as mascots. We can find them in this role already in works by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, as well as Titian (Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga), Goya (The White Duchess) and in many later paintings. Depictions of these quadrupeds also found their way onto frescoes in Renaissance Italian residences, such as the Villa Barbaro in the Veneto region.
For centuries, dogs were only shown as man’s companions, servants or supplements to his story. But at the end of the eighteenth century, and certainly in the nineteenth, the dog finally becomes the main theme of painted works. One of the first of these is a portrait of Bob, a Newfoundland dog lifeguard, painted by Edwin Landseer (A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society, 1831). Thanks to this artist’s talent, dogs gained their well-deserved position in figurative art outside of Europe. We can find canine heroes on such Landseer works as Dignity and Impudence, A Scene at Abbotsford, A Deerhound or A Highland Breakfast. It’s a shame that it took European art so long to appreciate our four-legged friends.
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