Cluny Dogs
While touring museums and galleries I like to keep an eye out for dogs in the collections, which I try to record and send to my canine-enthusiast friend, J. Accompanying our current houseguest to the Musée de Cluny (Officially, the National Museum of the Middle Ages), I found plenty.
Many scenes in these five and six-hundred-year-old tapestries reflected, if not daily life, at least things that were features and sights of the times. For instance, there was one of a woman taking a bath, and while I'm sure it was not typical for a woman to be outdoors in her bath attended by minstrels, there was something real in the way the water drained from the bath and left a puddle in which ducks were swimming. In the same way, while the scenes of important gatherings all look very staged, there are countless details that provideverisimilitudee; and one of those was the dogs that are often found around people's feet. The picture above is detail from the scene below. With a better quality picture, you would be able to count nine dogs in the scene.
Even the museum's most famous pieces, the series of tapestries known as "The Lady and the Unicorn" contains a dog, as this detail from one of the series, "Mon Seul Desir", (full size) shows.
posted 13.7.06
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