(Cento 1591–1666 Bologna)
Portrait of an Italian mastiff and a tri-coloured spaniel before a wall, a landscape beyond,
oil on canvas, 98 x 127 cm, framed

We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for confirming the attribution of the present painting and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

This work is one of only three known animal subjects by Guercino. The other two are Portrait of the Aldovrandi Dog, in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (inv. no. F.1984.2.P) and Portrait of an Italian mastiff, recently with Cheffin’s, Cambridge, which are both datable to circa 1625. The more classical compositional arrangement adopted in the present canvas suggest that it was executed some two or three years later than the other two compositions. All three predate the painter’s Account Book, begun in 1629.

In this picture, Guercino has exploited to great effect the contrast in personality between the two breeds of dog. He has observed their dissimilarity in physique and behavior with great acuteness. The burly mastiff stands its ground, looking out unflinchingly at the spectator, while the spaniel jumps excitably in front of it, in an unsuccessful attempt to gain its attention. They are opposites in character, colour and marking. The different sorts of collar they wear also indicate their strikingly divergent lives. The mastiff’s heavy collar is metal, with large metal spikes, the purpose of which is to protect the dog’s neck from the vicious bites of bears and wolves while hunting with its master. Another indication of the dangers regularly faced by the dog is the absence of most of its right ear, doubtless torn away in some encounter with a wild animal.

The lavishly caparisoned spaniel, on the other hand, seems to have spent its life indoors, very likely as the lap dog of the ladies of the house. Its black, white and red-brown coat is well-groomed and its agile little body intact. It wears a fancy collar of board red ribbon, which is soft, light and loose-fitting and elegantly decorated with gold. As Guercino makes plain, the comfortable life of the spaniel is the antithesis of the perilous out-of-doors existence of the mastiff.

This painting by Guercino is his only extant painting that shows two animals in the same composition. Compared with the individual dogs in the Norton Simon and ex-Cheffin’s picture – which portrays the mastiff sitting – the canine pair in the present picture are smaller in scale in relation to the overall picture space. Since their interaction is the subject of the picture, the artist intended them not to exert as powerful a presence as the dogs in the other two pictures. Much as the human protagonists in Guercino’s history paintings, here the Italian mastiff and the tri-coloured spaniel appear as actors on a stage, each playing its part in the action. It is their difference in psychology rather than the sheer force of their being that dominates the picture. The neutral backdrop provided by the wall works as a foil to this extraordinary representation of a canine encounter.