The Dog at the Feet of Archbishop Tenorio

Fig. 1. Tomb of Archbishop Pedro Tenorio (d. 1399) (taken by the author, October 2016).

Pedro Tenorio, born about 1328, was  archbishop of Toledo from 1377 until his death in 1399. His tomb is in the Capilla de San Blas (chapel of Saint Blaise) in the cathedral of Toledo, where his marble effigy lies recumbant in the vestments of his office, at his feet a dog. The dog looks adoringly towards his master. The tomb was carved in the workshop of Ferrand Gonzalez, a painter and sculptor, who was responsible for other tombs with similar features, including many with dogs lying in the same position and attitude. The archbishop was heavily involved in the design of the Capilla de San Blas and it is likely that he wanted the accompaniment of a hunting dog at his final resting place. (Figures 1 and 3 show the dog of Archbishop Tenorio from different angles.)

Fig. 2. Amadis, dog of Lorenzo Suarez.

Architectural discussions of the chapel and the tomb refer to the dog as a lebrel, a greyhound or sighthound (Franco Mata, 1991; Perez Higuera, 1978). The dogs of the tombs carved in the workshop of Ferrand Gonzalez generally have wide and ornate collars. In two of the tombs attributed to Ferrand Gonzalez, the collars of the dogs contain their names. (Figure 2 shows a dog at the feet of Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, another tomb carved by Ferrand Gonzalez, with the dog's name on the back of the collar. Courtesy Jose Luis Filpo Caban, Wikimedia Commons, 2017). For tombs of ladies, the dogs at their feet, or at their sides, are small lapdogs.. The collars of lapdogs are often decorated with bells (Figure 4, tomb of Leonor Guzman de Castilla. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The dog at the archbishop’s feet is not the only dog in the Capilla de San Blas. On the ceiling, one panel, perhaps painted by Ferrand Gonzalez, depicts the adoration of the shepherds. In the painting, a dog rests curled up on the ground in a nook below the box in which the swaddled Christ child looks upon his visitors (Fig. 5. Ceiling panel in Capilla de San Blas, Wikimedia Commons). The dog does not have cropped ears as do the dogs of the tombs and could be either a hunting or guarding type. (Curiously, many centuries later, the architect Antoni Guadi, would have a Catalan sheep dog accompany the shepherds visiting the manger on the Nativity Façade of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.)

The dogs could be lebreles, but probably not in the most narrow sense. Alberto Salas (1950), in his description of the dogs of the Spanish conquest, noted that alanos were sometimes classified as lebreles. There were regional and probably temporal variations in terms for hunting dogs, so it must be kept in mind that the dog at the feet of the archbishop was carved at the end of the fourteenth century and one must know something about the hunting culture of that period to understand why such dogs were a common architectural feature.

Fig. 3. Tomb of Archbishop Tenorio (detail).

The hunts of the pontifical court of Toledo were elaborate affairs involving the archbishop and his entourage, which included crossbowmen, various professional hunters, falconers, and sometimes minstrels, drummers, and trumpeters. The overall supervision of the hunt fell upon an important official, the montero mayor, chief hunter. Hunting parties were largely unrestricted in where they could hunt, ranging freely across estates and through cities and towns where they could demand that the corregidores (mayors) provide lodging free of charge and provisions at moderate prices. Among the dogs they brought were not only lebreles, but also sabuesos (similar to bloodhounds), and ventores (sometimes described as crosses of sabuesos and mastins). The ladies might have their lapdogs. Such parties hunted deer and rousted birds. This was burdensome to the communities through which the entourage passed as indicated by a petition of seven villages within the archbishopric of Toledo asking that, because of the impositions of the archbishop's frequent hunting parties, the villages should be relieved of los pechos de Hermandad (the tax of St. Hermandad), the funds of which were used to suppress robbers and keep the roads secure (Ortega Cervigon, 2003).

Correspondence of Archbishop Tenorio refers to his alanos, which were highly prized. In June 1291, King Juan 1 of Aragon wrote to him, requesting that he send two alanos and an alana (presumably so that the king could breed them himself). Records also survive of the salaries of the archbishop’s mojos de alanos “alano boys” (Canas Galvez 2010, 2020). John Cummins (2003) noted that a ruler from a slightly earlier period, Alfonso XI of Castile (1311-1350), was particularly fond of alanos and wrote extensively about them in a hunting treatise (while barely mentioning lebreles), but a miniature showing him on his throne suggests that he kept a favored lebrel, "perhaps as a graceful presence rather than as a hunting dog."

Fig. 4. Tomb of Leonor de Castilla (detail).

The ears of the hunting dogs carved by Ferrand Gonzalez, to the extent I have been able to find pictorial evidence, are cropped. (Franco Mata and Perez Higuera do not completely agree on the list of tombs sculpted by Ferrand Gonzalez). A manuscript in the British Museum (Almazán 1936) states that the ears of alanos should be cropped on the tenth day after they open their eyes, but the ears of lebreles should be left alone. 

Funerary sculptures of dogs in the late middle ages should probably not be expected to reflect a precise reality of the subjects. The bulbous heads and thick bodies of the dogs carved by Ferrand Gonzalez may reflect artistic objectives that compromised realism. We must also acknowledge the greater variation in types prior to modern breeding practices. Despite these caveats, the dog at the feet of the archbishop, and the other dogs sculpted by Ferrand Gonzalez appear to be alanos, bulkier than the swiftest lebreles and more useful in a fight against a boar, though less likely to catch up with a deer or a rabbit. 

In a paper published in 2022, I argued that the dogs that Columbus brought to the Hispaniola on his second voyage were lebreles, as indicated by most contemporary or near-contemporary sources, not mastines (mastiffs), as sometimes stated by more recent historians. This was a specific instance of the transfer of dogs from the Old World to the New, but to provide a thorough analysis of dogs brought by European migrations and to know what was expected of them in the new environment, one must consider their original function and appearance. Thus, it would be necessary to investigate how these dogs were used in Europe for hunting, herding, and decorating the boudoir, for which there would be many variations across the Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Russian, and other cultures that sent dogs to the Americas.  Hopefully there is some doctoral student, perhaps in a combined history and art program, working on this.  

References:

Almazán, Duque de (2005. 1936). Tratado de montería del siglo XV: Manuscrito del Museo Británico [1936]. Facsimile edition. Madrid: Editorial Maxtor.

Cañas Gálvez, Francisco de Paula (2020). Los Últimos Años del Pontificado de Pedro Tenorio: Contextos Politicos, Ámbitos de Actuacion, Muerte y Testamento de un Primado Toledano (1393-†1399). Hispania Sacra, 72(145), 151-176 (2020).

--- (2010). La cámara de Juan II: Vida privada, ceremonia y lujo en la Corte de Castilla a mediados del siglo XV. Evolucion Estructura de la Casa Real de Castilla, vol. 1, 81-195.

Cummins, John (2003). The art of medieval hunting: the hound and the hawk. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Fig. 5. Adoracion de pastores, Capilla de San Blas

Ensminger, John (2022). From hunters to hell hounds: the dogs of Columbus and transformations of the human-canine relationship in the early Spanish Caribbean. Colonial Latin American Review, 31(3), 354-380.  

Franco Mata, Angela (1991)., El Sepulcro de don Pedro Suarez III (s XIV) y el taller toledano de Ferrand Gonzalez, Boletin del Museo Arqueologico Nacional, vol. IX, no. 1.

Montoya, María Isabel (1990). Léxico de libro de la montería de Alfonso XI. Granada: Universidad de Granada.

Ortega Cervigon (2003) La funcionalidad política de la nobleza castellana: el oficio de Montero Mayor durante el siglo XV

Perez Higuera, T. (1978) Ferrand Gonzalez y los sepulcros del taller toledano (1385-1410). Boletin del Seminario de Arte y Arqueologia, Universidad del Valladolid, vol. 44, 129-142. 

Salas, Alberto Mario (1950). Las armas de la conquista. Buenos Aires: Emecé.