Jennings Dog

The Jennings Dog (also known as The Duncombe Dog or The Dog of Alcibiades) is a Roman sculpture of a dog with a docked tail. It is named after its first modern owner Henry Constantine Jennings. It is a 2nd-century AD Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze original. The original was probably of the 2nd century BC. It is 1.05 metres (3 ft 5 in) high; its leonine muzzle and one leg have been repaired since its rediscovery. Though it is one of only a few animal sculptures surviving from antiquity, a pair of similar marble mastiffs of the same model can be seen in the Belvedere Court of the Vatican Museums.

It is identified at the British Museum as a Molossian guard dog. The Molossian breed was native to Epirus in northwestern Greece, which was sacked by Rome in 168 BC, so it is assumed to have been associated with some civic monument in Epirus, and to have been brought to Rome. Pliny mentions a highly valued bronze dog surviving in Rome into his lifetime, before being lost in 69 AD:

... our own generation saw on the Capitol, before it went up in flames burnt at the hands of the adherents of Vitellius, in the shrine of Juno, a bronze figure of a hound licking its wound, the miraculous excellence and absolute truth to life of which is shown not only by the fact of its dedication in that place but also by the method taken for insuring it; for as no sum of money seemed to equal its value, the government enacted that its custodians should be answerable for its safety with their lives.

The stone sculpture was discovered at Monte Cagnuolo, near the ancient Lanuvium, the site of an imperial villa of Antoninus Pius, 32 km southeast of Rome, where it was probably made; its first modern owner was the sculptor, restorer and dealer in antiquities Bartolomeo Cavaceppi.Henry Constantine Jennings saw it in a pile of rubble in Cavaceppi's workshop in Rome between 1753 and 1756, bought it from him for 400 scudi, and took it back to Britain.

...
Wikipedia