30 Knight's Yale i2qo 



V. KNIGHT'S TALE 1290 



On the wall of the Camera degii Sposi of the Castello di Corte 

 at Mantua, Andrea Mantegna, between 1468 and 1474, repre- 

 sented a meeting between Lodovico II Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, 

 and his son Francesco, then Cardinal. In one of the smaller 

 compartments of the fresco is depicted the horse from which the 

 Marquis has just alighted, and near the horse two large dogs, 

 perhaps three feet in height to the top of the head, white or grey 

 in color, one at least being held by a leash. This dog, the one 

 facing the spectator, is of powerful build, the head large, the eyes 

 small, and the ears cropped. The picture is reproduced by Thode 

 (Mantegna, p. 61), Knapp (Andrea Mantegna, p. 41), and 

 Kristeller (Andrea Mantegna, p. 251). Thode describes the 

 dogs merely as Lodovico's favorites ; Cruttwell (Andrea 

 Mantegna, p. 69), as 'fierce looking boarhounds' ; and Kristeller 

 (p. 249), as 'huge dogs (not hounds for the chase, as has been 

 supposed).' It is evident that the biographers are in considerable 

 uncertainty as to the species of the dogs in question, even though 

 Kristeller elsewhere maintains (p. 262) that these 'animals [are] 

 studied from nature with amazing care and fidelity.' It occurs to 

 me to suggest that these dogs may perhaps be alaunts, of which 

 Baillie-Grohman remarks (Cook, TJie Last Months of Chaucer's 

 Earliest Patron: Trans. Conn. Acad, of Arts and Sciences 21. 

 135) : 'Both Gaston [de Foix] and the Spanish king [Alfonso 

 XI] say that the body of the Alaunt was like that of a heavy 

 greyhound, their eyes were small, they were square in the jaw, 

 and that their ears were trimmed and pointed to make them look 

 alert. The tail was rather large than small. They were of three 

 colors, white, grey, and blackish.' De Noirmont (op. cit., p. 136) 

 'compares it to the Great Dane or German boarhound, to which 

 he assigns a height of 30 to 32, or, exceptionally, 34 inches' — • 

 that is, to the shoulder. It will be seen that these accounts apply 

 sufificiently well to the dogs delineated by Mantegna. Chaucer's 

 alaunts, as we know, were white. 



Other representations of dogs which might be consulted in 

 this connection are in Titian's picture of Charles V (Prado), 

 Venus and Adonis (Prado), and \'^an Dyck's Duke of Juliers 

 and Berg (Munich). 



For the alaunt in a fifteenth-century shield, see Encyc. Brit., 

 I ith ed., 13. 326. 



