arts Article Seeing the Dog: Naturalistic Canine Representations from Greek Art Kenneth F. Kitchell Department of Classics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA;
[email protected] Received: 13 November 2019; Accepted: 10 January 2020; Published: 30 January 2020 Abstract: This study attempts to demonstrate that ancient Greek authors and vase painters (mostly of the late sixth and early fifth centuries) were well attuned to the many bodily gestures and positions exhibited by dogs in real life and utilized this knowledge in producing their works. Once this is clear, it becomes evident that the Greek public at large was equally aware of such canine bodily gestures and positions. This extends the seminal work on gestures of Boegehold and Lateiner to the animal world and seeks also to serve as a call for further study of similar animals throughout ancient Greek times. Keywords: animal studies; dogs in antiquity; animals in antiquity; Greek vases; body language Despite the recent increased interest in animal studies, the dedicated work of scholars such as Liliane Bodson, and the publication of several handbooks and guides to animals in Greco-Roman antiquity, there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of the role of animals in material culture.1 As Harden(2014, p. 24) recently pointed out, Animals frequently go unrecorded in publications and museum captions ::: [and] rarely are individual species indexed in publications ::: The art of the ancient Mediterranean is replete with images of animals, and much Classical art features animals prominently, but there are very few modern scholarly works that seek to analyze the semiotics of the depicted animal.2 Until the recent increase in ancient animal studies, animals remained in the background, both literally and figuratively.