Jennings Dog

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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.

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Generally identified as a Molossian guard dog, it is 1.05m high and its muzzle and one leg have been repaired since its rediscovery. Though it is one of few animal sculptures surviving from antiquity, a pair of similar mastiffs can be seen in the Belvedere Court of the Vatican Museums.

It is a 2nd century AD Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze original. This original was probably of the 2nd century BC and associated with a civic monument in Epirus or Molossia. Pliny mentions another similar dog bronze 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" (XXXIV.38).

Following the stone sculpture's rediscovery in Rome (where it was probably made), its first modern owner was 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 saidi, and took it back to Britain. A story in Plutarch's biography of Alcibiades (Alcibiades, 9) tells of the statesman owning a large, handsome dog whose tail Alcibiades cut off so as to invoke pity from the Athenians and distract them from his worse deeds. The broken tail of this sculpture led Jennings to link it to this story, calling it "the dog of Alcibiades".

The sculpture became famous on its arrival in Britain, with replicas thought to make "a most noble appearance in a gentleman's hall.", in Dr Johnson's words. James Boswell also records a conversation between Johnson and other members of the Literary Club, around the time of the statue's sale to Duncombe, in which Edmund Burke exclaimed "A thousand guineas! The representation of no animal whatever is worth so much", to which Dr Johnson replied "Sir, it is not the worth of the thing, but the skill in forming it, which is so highly estimated."

In settlement of his gambling debts in 1778, Jennings was forced to sell the sculpture, stating "A fine dog it was, and a lucky dog was I to purchase it". The dog was soon afterwards sold at Phillips for £1000 to the Rt Hon Charles Duncombe and for 150 years stood guard at the entrance to Duncombe Park, the family mansion in Yorkshire. It remained there, off public view, until 1925. In that year, inheritance taxes forced the Duncombes to rent out the hall to Queen Mary's School for Girls, whose pupils were rumoured to feed the dog unwanted Marmite sandwiches.

It was finally sold off by Thomas Duncombe's descendent Charles Anthony Peter Duncombe, 6th Baron Feversham, in 2001. Initially the Houston Museum, Texas, USA attempted to purchase it (the sculpture had been shown in the US in the 1980s), at the price of $950,000, but the granting of an export licence was deferred by the UK government. The Heritage Lottery Fund, National Art Collections Fund, British Museum Friends, Duthie Fund, Ready Bequest, Caryatid Fund, Mrs Barbara G Fleischman, Mr Frank A Ladd and the Ready Bequest had already pledged funds to help "save it for the nation". With the sculpture on temporary display in its Great Court, the delay on the export allowed the British Museum long enough to raise the remaining £662,297 through a public appeal, and thus to acquire it permanently. Its catalogue number is 2001.1010.1, and it is now on permanent display in gallery 22 of the Museum.

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