Dogs & Their Collars in the Age of Enlightenment
In medieval and Renaissance Europe, dogs were considered little more than 'machines' which performed certain tasks, such as guarding a home or tracking game, but this view changed significantly during the Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason) of the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual movement among the upper-class intelligentsia, which encouraged a re-evaluation and reinterpretation of widely held beliefs concerning the human condition. Prior to the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648), the Catholic Church had shaped European interpretation of life and one’s place in the universe, but afterwards, individuals were encouraged to seek a personal relationship with God based on their own understanding of scripture and this led to greater freedom of spiritual and intellectual pursuits which eventually found expression during the Age of Enlightenment.
Among the many advances this period produced was a re-evaluation of the dog. The Church had declared that dogs were soulless beings and should not be treated with the same regard as humans who had been endowed with an immortal soul. One of the most significant thinkers of the Enlightenment, René Descartes (l. 1596-1650), the philosopher some cite as the "Father of the Enlightenment", decided to prove the Church’s claim true or false by dissecting dogs while they were still alive, even his wife’s pet dog and, finding no evidence of a soul, concluded the Church was correct.
Later thinkers, artists, and poets disagreed with Descartes, however, and featured the animals in their works, often excluding human subjects. Dog collars, which were previously utilitarian devices for controlling the animals, became ornate works of art. Collars were so valuable, in fact, that laws were enacted punishing people for the theft of a collar more severely than if they had stolen the dog itself. The Age of Enlightenment dramatically changed the way people viewed and treated dogs and eventually encouraged the development of societies dedicated to their safety, comfort, and well-being.
In 1434, the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck (l. c. 1390-1441) painted what is arguably his masterpiece, the Arnolfini Portrait, of a man and woman in a room with a dog. The two people, presumably a husband and his pregnant wife, seem to be in the midst of a serious discussion, but the small dog at their feet looks attentively out toward the viewer. The painting has long been praised for its intimacy and realism, and this dog is an important aspect of that. This dog has no concern at all for whatever drama may or may not be unfolding between the two humans; its attention is on the stranger - the person now viewing the painting - who has just walked in on this scene.
Impressive as the work is, no other artists chose to represent dogs in such an intimate and realistic manner again until the 18th century when paintings begin to regularly feature the upper class in the company of a favorite dog. The painting Miss Mary Edwards (1742) by the English artist William Hogarth (l. 1697-1764) shows the woman at her writing table stroking the head of her spaniel and A Woman with a Dog (1769) by French painter Jean Honore Fragonard (l. 1732-1806) catches a woman holding up her small white lapdog, wearing a blue-ribbon collar and leash, as though the viewer has just opened the door and surprised her. The dog in this painting, unlike in van Eyck's, takes no notice of the intruder and only has eyes for its mistress.
Dog collars in these paintings and many others, when they are shown, are often bands of gold or silver or, as in the case of Fragonard's piece, ribbon. In many of the Enlightenment paintings which feature dogs, the focus is clearly on the human subject with the dog playing a secondary role in the composition until one artist decided to elevate the dog in art and, in doing so, changed the way people saw dogs in their daily lives.
