Srinagar, Aug. 8 -- Walk through a Renaissance painting and you may notice something curious: a dog at someone's feet, a bird perched in a child's hand, a rabbit hiding among flowers, or a serpent coiling through a biblical scene. To the modern eye, these details can seem incidental. To a Renaissance viewer, however, they could carry an entire vocabulary of meaning.

During the Renaissance, animals were rarely included simply to make a painting more attractive. They could represent virtues and vices, love and loyalty, death and resurrection, temptation and redemption, or even the social identity of the person being portrayed. Their meanings were shaped by the Bible, medieval bestiaries, classical mythology, popular beliefs and the symboli...