Renaissance Pet Portraits –Turn Your Pet into Royalty

Royal or Renaissance: two ways to paint renaissance pet portraits

Both styles are oil paintings with costumes, but the mood is different. Royal is the grander one: velvet and ermine robes, gold embroidery, a lace ruff and a dark palace background with a soft rim of light around your pet. Think of a 17th-century monarch hanging in a great hall. Renaissance is quieter: a lace ruff and pearls, a deep green or brown backdrop and the gentle light of an Old Master. It feels more like a noble family portrait in a private study.

Pick Royal for dogs with presence, such as a golden retriever, a German shepherd or a stately Great Dane. Pick Renaissance for cats and small breeds that look best in soft, intimate light. Neither choice is wrong, and you can run the same photo through both to compare.

The eight costumes, explained

Each costume works with either style. Here is what you get and who it suits:

• King: a jeweled gold crown and a red velvet cape trimmed in ermine. The classic royal dog portrait, perfect for the head of the household.
• Queen: a delicate jeweled tiara, a pearl necklace and an ermine-trimmed velvet gown. Lovely on long-haired cats and elegant females.
• Duke: a plumed velvet hat, an embroidered doublet and a gold chain of office. A good pick for a confident male who is not quite a king.
• Duchess: a feathered velvet hat, pearls and a lace-trimmed silk gown. Our favorite for tabby and calico cats, as you can see in the gallery.
• Admiral: an 18th-century navy coat with gold epaulettes and medals, a bicorne hat and a stormy sea-battle sky behind. Great for adventurous dogs and water lovers.
• General: a Napoleonic military jacket with gold braid, a sash and rows of medals. This is the pet military portrait people ask for, ideal for a stocky bulldog or a family with service members.
• Knight: polished engraved plate armor and a heraldic tabard. It gives you a medieval dog painting with real gravity, especially for big or senior dogs.
• Princess: a small sparkling tiara, a soft pink silk gown and flowers. Sweet for puppies, kittens and any pet who is clearly the baby of the family.

Medieval, renaissance and victorian pet portraits: what the words mean

People search for this look in many ways: renaissance dog painting, medieval dog painting, victorian pet portraits, regal pet portraits. Historically these are different eras. Medieval art is knights and heraldry. The Renaissance brought lace ruffs, pearls and realistic oil portraits. Victorian painters loved sentimental scenes of dogs by the fire. Online the words blur together, and they all mean the same wish: your pet painted with the dignity of an old master portrait.

Our costumes cover each of these. Knight gives the medieval feel. Duchess, Duke and Queen in the Renaissance style give the ruff-and-pearls look. A King in the Royal style is the full regal treatment. If you want an old-fashioned portrait without any costume, the pet portrait painting page uses the same oil technique with a plain dark background.

Photos that make the best royal pet portraits

In renaissance pet portraits the costume is painted around your pet's head and shoulders, so the head is what matters. A photo taken at your pet's eye level, chin slightly raised, looks noble without any effort. Photos from above make a pet look small, which is fine for Princess and less fitting for General. Make sure the ears are fully in frame: crowns, tiaras and hats sit between them, and a cropped ear can push the headwear off center.

Dogs and cats both work well, and so do horses and rabbits. In our own test, a bay horse in the Royal style came back wearing an embroidered blanket instead of a cape, a fun twist for riders. See animal portraits for tips on other species, or cat portraits if your monarch has whiskers.

Price, printing and gifting

Your first royal portrait is free to preview and free to download in HD once you sign up. After that each single-pet portrait is 40 credits, under $1 in any pack. Shops that sell renaissance pet portraits as finished canvases usually charge $15 to $40 for the file and $60 to $170 for a canvas, so you can try every costume here for less than one order there. See pricing for the packs.

The 2048 px file prints crisply at about 8 × 8 inches at any print shop. For a couple or a pair of siblings, the pet and owner portraits mode can put two pets side by side as king and queen.