Medieval painters gave dogs human faces to symbolize cowardice

Detail from

In the Retable de la Passion, an oil-on-wood altarpiece from around 1500, a small dog sits among the crowd at Christ’s trial. It has grey stubble, a weak chin, and an expression that’s unsettlingly human. The dog is Pontius Pilate.

In late medieval Passion literature, Christ’s tormentors were called “cruel and mad dogs,” and painters took the …