One of the most remarkable facts is that paintings of Tobias and the Angel include a dog

One of the most remarkable facts is that paintings of Tobias and the Angel include a dog. And how, indeed, could one do without it? Tobias sets off on a perilous journey, taking with him a single companion, whom he had not known before, and a faithful friend, the dog that had lived with him in the same house. Possibly the dog is sent by his father, to keep watch over his son on the road through deserts and foreign settlements.

But dogs are exceptionally rare in Christian religious art. The notion of the dog as a friend is, in general, not characteristic of ancient Hebrew culture; the ancient Israelites, on the contrary, considered dogs unclean. And the presence of a dog in an Old Testament narrative probably points to the foreign origin of this story.

As a rule, Renaissance artists depict in this subject rather small dogs with long white coats, precisely like the one in Filippino Lippi, which points less to the function of a guard than to certain shortcomings in the tradition of painting dogs, that rare hero of religious art. A shaggy little dog is, after all, far easier to paint