On 29 August 1511, Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, lost her beloved dog Aura when the animal fell from a balcony. The tragedy prompted Isabella to commission a lead casket and to invite poets and scholars across Italy to write epitaphs for Aura’s tomb. The dog’s death was also commemorated in verse sent by the Vatican library and may have inspired a canvas portrait of Isabella with a white dog, possibly Aura, by Lorenzo Costa or Il Cavazzola.
Isabella’s son, Federico II of Gonzaga, inherited his mother’s affection for small dogs. In the 1550s, Titian painted him with a sandy‑coloured lapdog, a portrait now housed in Madrid’s Prado Museum. The dog’s fur and posture were rendered with careful detail, underscoring the bond between master and pet.
Renaissance artists frequently used lapdogs to signify status. Paolo Veronese’s 1563 The Wedding at Cana features a miniature brown‑and‑white lapdog on the banquet table, while Jan van Eyck’s 1434 Arnolfini Portrait shows a gray terrier‑like dog at the feet of a dead wife, symbolising fidelity.
In the 1640s, Giovanna Garzoni painted tiny lapdogs beside porcelain cups, and the Medici family commissioned Tiberio di Tito to paint twelve toy dogs in the Boboli Gardens. These dogs wore ornate collars and earrings, and one even poked out of a red box on its keeper’s lap.
Isabella Clara Eugenia’s grand painting, now known as The Woman with Dogs, displays thirty of her lapdogs, each named and adorned with bows and earrings, highlighting the personal significance of these animals to their owners.