Talking (Dog) Portraits
La mia storia nell’arte. Ritratti di cani memorabili is a collection of stories that will, almost certainly, ‘mandare in solluchero’ (that’s Italian for ‘delight greatly’) art and dogs lovers as long as they can read Italian. The book hasn’t been translated yet.
I ordered a copy of the book the same day I saw it featured on the Art History News website, and set on writing this piece even before finishing reading the first story. But then, being the master procrastinator that I am, I went hunting for images and written texts about dogs as soon as I put fingers to the keyboard. After all, doing research is still one of my favourite forms of “virtuous” procrastination.
As pointed out by Sabrina Foschini in the introduction, the dog is the most represented being after the human. A quick search by subject of online art collections can provide ample proof of this statement as it will send you on an endless journey or scrolling - Art UK, for instance, will come up with more than three thousand artworks. Likewise, Google Scholars will gather rather surprising results as it lists, along with the many expected journal articles on the sleeping dogs in Velasquez’s Las Meninas, also something titled “Dogs and Dogma”, no less! The latter one, just in case you are wondering, is about “a small, scruffy mutts” in Rembrandt’s Presentation in the Temple.
Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-1492), Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta Praying in Front of St. Sigismund, 1451. Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini.
Beginning with the black and white pointers painted by Piero della Francesca in his fresco of Sigismondo Malatesta in Rimini, La mia storia nell’arte features some truly memorable images of dogs. Although they are all portrayed in dignified poses (nothing like the ill-mannered creatures painted by Rubens or Watteau), often their names have not been recorded, not even the one of the black (English cocker, perhaps) spaniel who is on the cover of the book.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Courbet with a black dog, 1842-44. Petit Palais, Paris.
Leaving behind the notion learned by all first-year students of History of Art that dogs were often portrayed to represent a virtue, La mia storia nell’arte. Ritratti di cani memorabili pays homage to the actual companions of rulers, saints and painters. But there are also portraits of dogs posing on their own. The ones who had the good fortune to have an artist as a dad, (namely David Hockney’s beloved Stanley and Boogie, and Andy Warhol’s superstar Archie) have become unmissable from any such publication - by the way, someone really should look into the reasons so many male artists have a penchant for dachshunds. Others, like the fearless Bob (pictured below) and the exotic Tama, were so well-known in their own time that they were portrayed by the most successful artists of the day.
Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–1873), A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society, exhibited 1838. Tate Britain, London.
A dog that might have been worshipped as a celebrity by his nearest and dearest is the proud Baio (which is short of ‘abbaio’ - first-person singular of the verb ‘to bark’), if his owner asked no less than Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, best-known as Il Guercino, to paint his portrait. Better known these days as The ‘Aldovrandi Dog, Baio’s portrait no longer lives with Count Filippo Maria Aldrovandi’s descendants in the family palace in Bologna, but at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri called Guercino (1591–1666), The Aldrovandi Dog, c.1625. The Norton Simon Foundation.
In the book the recourse to close-ups makes the reader feel that the dogs could start talking any moment. With the old-favourite Italian saying in mind ‘Al cane manca solo la parola’ (that translates ‘if only they could speak’) and considering the life they lived, it is no surprise that they do have a story (or two) to tell. Four Italian authors - Lia Celi, Sabrina Foschini, Alessandro Giovanardi, and Massimo Pulini - have told their stories in a way that, though unconventional, makes the book differ from similar titles.
Without giving away anything that would be considered a spoiler - already in the introduction the reader is informed about it by the editor, Sabrina Foschini - stories are told from the dogs’ point of view. As one would expect when dealing with four-legged creatures, a first-person narration is a device that should be handled with great caution in order to avoid mixed reactions from readers not used to meet a pack of formalist dogs, so to speak. And yet, even in the most bizarre of encounters, it is the formalist analysis that prevents some stories from going one level of wackiness too far.
The book is peppered with exquisite and sometimes humorous poems. Although it is undeniable that a translation of the book into English would allow it to reach a wider public, Gianni Rodari’s compositions are so imaginative and witty that they alone are worth learning Italian.
La mia storia nell’arte. Ritratti di cani memorabili
a cura di Sabrina Foschini, 127 pp., ill. col., NFC Edizioni, Rimini 2021
