Dogs attacking a wild boar

The Prado dates this canvas no more closely than the 17th century. The earliest record the museum lists for it is an inventory of the royal palace in Madrid completed in 1794, which puts it in the room next to the ballroom, on the way through to the back apartments of the infantas. It hung there as one of a pair. The clerk wrote down two fights, dogs with a bull in one and a boar harried by dogs in the other, and set a single price on both. The museum's 1857 catalogue says what is happening in this one. The boar has come out at the edge of a wood and has just thrown a dog into the air. Some of the others are badly hurt, and the rest bark from a distance, working themselves up to go in again.