"In January 1817, Mr. Castelli d'Orino, a Milanese, brought to Paris a Dog whose extraordinary talents are universally admired."
This is how the learned dog Munito was announced under an engraving depicting him, published exactly 207 years ago! His master, Signor Castelli d'Orino, had taught him various feats of strength. Knowing the rudiments of arithmetic and understanding several languages, he could also retrieve cards that were announced to him.
In Paris, the dog Munito and his master performed in an Illusion Cabinet, located on Cours des Fontaines near the Palais-Royal, and then traveled to different cities. In a rare small booklet dedicated to Munito's life, the dog is described as being similar in size to "that of an ordinary poodle [...] ; he is white and has only one brown spot on his left eye; his muzzle is short and curly [...]". This same booklet tells us that Munito was born "from the mating of a barbet bitch with a hunting dog, in Limito".
This popularity led to him being depicted in numerous engravings and even on plates. We reproduce below the detail of one of them where Munito is in the middle of a game of dominoes against his master. This plate exists in at least three different versions: one polychrome, and another with a different decoration.
Detail of the plate
But Munito was in reality nothing more than a dog endowed with rare intelligence, but not enough to understand different languages or know how to count. The whole act relied on a "trick", a simple ruse that gave the illusion that the dog truly possessed extraordinary cognitive abilities.
To conclude, let's specify that even after Munito's retirement from the stage, many other artists tried their luck by presenting the same experiments as Munito before them with their dogs. Among others, let's mention Monetto.
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