Dogs in Art

“Las Meninas”, Diego Velázquez’s 1656 masterwork depicts eleven figures from the Spanish court of King Philip IV and one Mastín Español (Spanish Mastiff), a dog originally bred in Spain to keep livestock safe from predators.  Perhaps the most scrutinized painting in all of Western art, “Las Meninas” was inspiration to a series of 58 others that Pablo Picasso created three hundred years later.  Picasso, himself a well established animal lover…