A Man with Crouching Dog (Smell)

The final work in the Prague Senses group, this 1650 panel depicting Smell through a man with a crouching dog is the most unconventional treatment of the sense in the series — rather than a figure reacting to a scent directly, Van Ostade introduces the animal as the supreme embodiment of olfactory acuity. Dogs were well known in seventeenth-century natural philosophy as creatures whose sense of smell exceeded the human by far, and a man and his dog together exploring a smell could function both as an allegorical pairing and as a genre observation of the familiar relationship between owner and pet. The Prague National Gallery's five Senses panels together form one of the most coherent surviving groups from Van Ostade's career.

On panel, the dog is painted with attentive animal observation — nose to the ground in the characteristic posture of scent-following, its body low and concentrated. The figure above observes the dog with an expression of amused or curious attention, their relationship defined through complementary postures that link human and animal in a shared olfactory investigation.