Dosso Dossi

Dosso Dossi
'Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Birth name	Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri
Born	1490
Died	1542
Nationality	Italian
Field	Painting
Movement	Italian Renaissance

Dosso Dossi (c. 1490 – 1542),^[1] real name Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri, was an Italian Renaissance painter who belonged to the Ferrara School of Painting.

Biography

Dossi was born in San Giovanni del Dosso a village in the province of Mantua. His early training and life is not well documented; his father, originally of Trento, was a bursar (spenditore or fattore) for the Dukes of Ferrara. He may have had training locally with Lorenzo Costa or in Mantua, where he is known to have been in 1512. By 1514, he would begin three decades of service for dukes Alfonso I and Ercole II d'Este, becoming principal court artist. Dosso worked frequently with his brother Battista Dossi, who had trained in the Roman workshop of Raphael. The works he produced for the dukes included the ephemeral decorations of furniture and theater sets. He is known to have worked alongside il Garofalo in the Costabili polyptych. One of his pupils was Giovanni Francesco Surchi (il Dielai).

Dosso Dossi is known less for his naturalism or attention to design, and more for cryptic allegorical conceits in paintings around mythological themes, a favored subject for the humanist Ferrarese court (see also Cosimo Tura and the decoration of the Palazzo Schifanoia). Freedburg uses the term sprezzatura to refer to Dossi's caricature-like, primitivist, and eccentric distortions of proportion. Dossi is also known for the atypical choices of bright pigment for his cabinet pieces. Some of his works, such as the Deposition have lambent qualities that suggest some of Correggio's works. Most of his works feature Christian and Ancient Greek themes and use oil painting as a medium.

The painting Aeneas in the Elysian Fields was part of the Camerino d'Alabstro of Alfonso I in the Este Castle, decorated with canvases depicting bacchanalia and erotic subjects including Feast of the Gods by Giovanni Bellini and Venus Worship by Titian. The frieze paintings were based on the Aeneid; this scene by Dossi is book 6, lines 635-709, wherein Aeneas is guided over the bridge into the Elysian Fields by the Cumaean Sibyl. Orpheus with the lyre flits in the forest; in the background are the ghostly horses of dead warriors.

In Hercules and the Pygmies, Hercules has fallen asleep after defeating Antaeus, and is set upon by an army of thumb-size pygmies, whom he defeats. He gathers them in his lion skin. Paintings depicting a powerful Hercules were commonly made for the then-ruler Duke Ercole II d'Este. The subjects of the Mythological Scene and Tubalcain are unknown.

Portrait of a Youth, the only confirmed portrait of Lucrezia Borgia by Dosso Dossi (1514-1516), at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Recently, "Portrait of a Youth" at the National Gallery of Victoria, the mysterious portrait of an unknown subject by an unknown painter, has been identified as a portrait of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia by Dosso Dossi.^[2]

In Ferrara, among his pupils were Gabriele Capellini, Jacopo Panicciati, and Giovanni Francesco Surchi.^[3]

Selected works

Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue, c. 3rd decade of the 16th century, Lanckoroński Collection, Wawel Castle

• Holy Family with Donors (1514, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Aeneas in the Elysian Fields, (1518–1521, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)
• The Virgin Appearing to Sts John the Baptist and John the Evangelist (1520s, Uffizi Gallery, Florence)^[4]
• Jupiter, Mercury and the Virtue, (1524, Wawel Castle, Kraków)
• Mythological Scene, c.1524; oil on canvas, 164 x 145 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles^[5]
• Allegory of Fortune, c.1530; oil on canvas, 178 x 216.5 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles^[6]
• Three Ages of Man or Rustic Idyll; 77.5 x 11.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Aeneas, Barber Institute, Birmingham
• Hercules and the Pygmies Alte Galerie am Landesmuseum Johanneum Graz
• Tubalcain (Allegory of Music) Museo Horne Florence
• Witchraft Stregoneria (Choice of Hercules between Vice and Virtue) Galleria degli Uffizi
• Saint Michael (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden)
• Saint George and the Dragon (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden)
• Portrait of a Warrior, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
• Portrait of a Youth, portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, National Gallery of Victoria^[7][8]

References

• Gibbons, Felton (1968). Dosso and Battista Dossi; court painters at Ferrara. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 
• Francis P. Smyth and John P. O'Neill (Editors in Chief (1986). National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. ed. The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries. pp. 111–128. 
• Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). Pelican History of Art. ed. Painting in Italy, 1500-1600. pp. 315–322 Penguin Books Ltd. 
• Ciammitti, Luisa; Steven F. Ostrow; Salvatore Settis (1998). Dosso's fate: painting and court culture in Renaissance Italy. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. ISBN 0892365056. 

1. ^ The 2003 Columbia Encyclopedia cites birthdate as c.1479. The Getty Museum (which owns some of Dossi's works), Britannica, Encarta, and the monograph below cite birthdate as c.1490. His place of birth is unknown.
2. ^ "NGV's Renaissance mystery woman revealed". Brisbane Times. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/ngvs-renaissance-mystery-woman-revealed/2008/11/25/1227491534785.html. 
3. ^ *Hobbes, James R. (1849). Picture collector's manual adapted to the professional man, and the amateur. T&W Boone, 29 Bond Street; Digitized by Googlebooks. pp. 77. http://books.google.com/books?q=intitle:picture+intitle:collector's. 
4. ^ Web Gallery of Art. The Virgin Appearing to Sts John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
5. ^ J. Paul Getty Museum. Mythological Scene. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
6. ^ J. Paul Getty Museum. Allegory of Fortune. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
7. ^ Infamous Renaissance woman subject of mystery portrait - Australian Broadcasting Corporation 26 November 2008, retrieved on 26 November 2008.
8. ^ Gallery unveils portrait of infamy - The Sydney Morning Herald 26 November 2008, retrieved on 26 November 2008.

External links

• Short biography and pictures at the J. Paul Getty Museum
• Images of some paintings
•  "Giovanni Dossi". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
• Gallery at MuseumSyndicate
• Works by Dosso Dossi at Census of Ferrarese Paintings and Drawings

Persondata
Name	Dossi, Dosso
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death	1542
Place of death