The dog in the Arnolfini Portrait: van Eyck's small pet up close

The small dog standing between the couple in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, dated 1434, stands close to the viewer and looks straight out of the picture. This page looks closely at that one animal: what kind of dog it is, how van Eyck painted its fur, whether it was meant as a symbol, and what happened to the painting over six centuries. It draws on the National Gallery in London, which owns the portrait, and above all on the Gallery's detailed catalogue entry by the curator Lorne Campbell, published in 1998 and updated in 2021. For the wider history of dogs in art, start with the dogs in art guide.

The painting in brief

The Arnolfini Portrait is an oil painting on an oak panel, 84.5 cm high and 62.5 cm wide, made of three boards. A richly dressed man and woman stand in a room in Bruges, in present-day Belgium. Oranges lie by the window, a brass chandelier hangs above them, and a round mirror on the back wall reflects the room and two more figures in the doorway. Above the mirror van Eyck painted his signature: "Johannes de eyck fuit hic 1434", Latin for "Jan van Eyck has been here, 1434".

The man is believed to be a member of the Arnolfini family, Italian merchants from Lucca who lived in Bruges. Campbell's catalogue lists five members of the family in Bruges at the time, and the painter's patron, the person who paid for the portrait, could have been any of them. The small dog stands on the floor between the couple, close to the viewer.

What kind of dog is it?

The catalogue says the dog "is clearly a household pet". It adds that the dog "has been recognised as one of a canine family from which the Brussels griffon has been bred", citing an article in Country Life magazine from 1955. The catalogue also compares it with other dogs in paintings of the time. It looks different from the dogs in paintings and miniatures of the Burgundian court, the court of the dukes who ruled Bruges. It also differs from the small whitish dogs with long hair and long, drooping ears that appear in paintings by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and their followers. In other words, van Eyck painted a particular kind of dog.

How van Eyck painted the fur

Campbell's catalogue describes the dog's colours in detail. Its hair is grey-brown, mixed from four pigments: black, vermilion, yellow and white. Vermilion is a bright red pigment. Some single strands of hair are painted in almost pure vermilion. The dog's eyes are brown, with small secondary lights in vermilion.

The National Gallery's own page on the painting adds that, for all its precision, the portrait was painted quickly and freely. Van Eyck bounced the brush off the panel for small touches of colour and used his fingers and the handle of the brush as well as its tip. The catalogue explains one result: to soften the edge where the shadow of the dog's back leg meets the floor, he smudged the paint with a finger or thumb and left a print. Our guide to what makes a Renaissance painting covers that thumbprint and the oil technique behind it.

Was the dog part of the first plan?

Before he painted, van Eyck drew the design on the prepared panel. This first drawing is called the underdrawing. Infrared light can show it through the paint today.

The catalogue reports that no underdrawing can be found for the dog. The same is true of the oranges, the beads, the two pairs of pattens (wooden overshoes worn outdoors) and the chandelier. These details were painted without a drawn plan beneath them. The figures, by contrast, were underdrawn and then changed during painting: the man's hat, his eyes and his nose all moved. Campbell reads these many changes as a sign of close contact between the painter and the couple, who "must surely have approved every departure from the first design".

Symbol or pet?

The National Gallery's glossary entry on dogs says the "precisely defined pet" in the foreground of the Arnolfini Portrait "may be intended to symbolise the fidelity of the couple". Fidelity means faithfulness. This reading has a long history in art writing about dogs.

The catalogue is more cautious. The art historian Erwin Panofsky argued that the painting was a "pictorial marriage certificate", a record of a secret wedding, and that many objects in the room were disguised symbols. Campbell takes the argument apart point by point:

• Panofsky called the man's raised hand a marriage gesture with a Latin name, but, the catalogue says, "in fact he had invented the term".
• Panofsky called the single candle a marriage candle, but produced no evidence that candles were burned at weddings.
• Panofsky described the room as a bedroom. The catalogue calls it a reception room, and says the bed was an essential part of such a room's furniture.

Campbell then makes a point that bears directly on the dog. "Most of the objects which, according to Panofsky and his followers, have symbolic significance, turn out not to have been underdrawn: the candle, the carving of Saint Margaret, the oranges, the discarded pattens, the dog." Campbell uses this as evidence against reading them as a planned set of hidden symbols.

So there are two readings. The glossary says the dog may stand for fidelity. The catalogue says it is clearly a pet and warns against reading every object as a hidden sign. Both come from the same museum, and both are worth knowing. Our page on what dogs mean in paintings looks at how the idea of the faithful dog developed in other works.

Six centuries of owners

The catalogue traces the painting's journey, and the dog travelled with it.

The National Gallery's page adds that it bought the portrait "for 'the moderate price' of 600 Guineas" and that it was the Gallery's first Netherlandish painting. The panel once had two painted shutters that closed over it like doors; the catalogue says they are lost.

Condition of the dog today

The catalogue says the painting, cleaned in 1942 and 1943, is well preserved. It lists small losses along a zig-zag scratch across the mirror and "a slight damage in the ribcage of the dog". Thin strips of the original oak frame remain attached to the top and bottom edges of the panel. The largest fragment begins just below the dog's left front paw.

Other dogs linked to the Arnolfini Portrait

The dog appears in later works too. The catalogue lists several:

• A copy in a manuscript. The Bruges illuminator Willem Vrelant painted a scene of the martyrdom of Saint Margaret in a copy of Vincent de Beauvais's Miroir historial, and "the London painting's dog appears in the foreground".
• A lost van Eyck. Two copies survive of a lost van Eyck painting of a nude woman with a clothed attendant. The copies show a room with a bed, a mirror, discarded pattens "and a small dog".
• A grey dog with a patron. A manuscript made in Paris in 1454 for Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini, one of the five Arnolfini in Bruges, opens with a painting of a kneeling man presenting a book to the young Charles the Bold. The catalogue says the pair are no doubt Arnolfini and Charles, though they are not recognisable portraits, and that the kneeling man "is accompanied by a grey dog".

The catalogue also warns against seeing van Eyck's influence everywhere. As it says, it is tempting to imagine that any work of art showing a couple with a dog must come from this painting.

What the Arnolfini dog means for a portrait of your own pet

Van Eyck gave a small pet the same care he gave a merchant's fur-lined robe: single hairs, a warm red glint, light in the eyes. The detail is what makes the dog feel real. If you want a portrait with that kind of detail, start with a sharp photo in which your dog's coat and eyes are clear, taken in good daylight at your dog's eye level.

Purrealism's Renaissance Royal style draws on the European portraits of this period; the cover of this page shows an English Bulldog from the studio examples in that style. Painters after van Eyck gave their dogs other roles: in Italy, Titian's dogs hunt with gods and sit with noble children, and two centuries later Dutch painters put dogs into family portraits and everyday scenes. When you are ready, choose a photo and start in the portrait studio.