Dosso Dossi

Self portrait

Dosso Dossi (actually Giovanni di Niccolò de 'Luteri ; * around 1480–90 in Ferrara ; † 1542 there ) was an Italian painter. He is considered the most important representative of the Ferrarese art of the late Renaissance .

Life and meaning

Nothing more is known about Dosso's youth and his education. The influence of Titian and Giorgione is so pronounced that it is reasonable to assume that his career began in Venice . It is first registered in Mantua in 1512 . From 1514 he worked in Ferrara as court painter to Duke Alfonso I d'Este . Here he worked - also often with his brother Battista - as a painter, but also as a decorator for court festivals and theater performances, and as an interior designer. The Dukes of Ferrara were very art-loving and brought important painters, musicians and writers to their court (including Ariost , with whom Dosso worked). Dosso eventually became the leader of the Ferrara School and one of the most important artists of his time. He could have been in Rome around 1520. In the last decade of his life, his brother played an increasingly important role in the joint workshop, which he also took over after Dosso's death. When the Vatican State took over the Duchy of Ferrara in 1598, his works were scattered; after a short time he was forgotten.

His religious and mythological pictures captivate with their bright colors, as is known from Titian. From the beginning, landscapes in magical light played an important role. Here Giorgione's influence is particularly evident. Dosso's independence, however, shows in his pronounced imagination, which comes into play in a number of allegorical depictions. Many of his paintings are considered difficult to interpret and puzzling because of their complex and dark subject matter. In his later works a supernatural light plays around melancholy figures in dreamy landscapes. Overall, his work is always very personal, almost eccentric, and full of imagination.

Works

National Gallery, London

Landscape with Kirke and Her Lovers (c.1514–1616), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

The world painter Zeus (1530s), Lanckoroński Collection on the Wawel , Cracow

• A bacchant , around 1525
• Lamentation over the body of Christ , around 1517
• The Adoration of the Magi , probably 1530–42
• A saint , after 1600
• A man hugging a woman , about 1524

Borghese Gallery, Rome

• Circe (or Melissa ), around 1520, oil on canvas [1]
• St. Cosmas and Damian , 1534–42, oil on canvas [2]
• Diana and Calisto , 1528, oil on canvas [3]
• Madonna and Child , 1525, oil on canvas [4]
• Apollo and Daphne , ca.1525, oil on canvas
• Gyges and King Candaulus , 1508/19, oil on canvas
• Adoration of the Child , 1519, oil on canvas

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

• The Virgin with John the Baptist and John the Evangelist , 1520, oil on wood, transferred to canvas [5]
• Portrait of a warrior , 1530s, oil on canvas [6]
• Witchcraft (Allegory of Hercules) , around 1535, oil on canvas [7]

Other museums

• Sybille , 1516–20, oil on canvas, Hermitage St. Petersburg [8]
• Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan coast , around 1520, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art Washington [9]
• St. John and Bartholomew with donors , 1527, oil on panel, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome [10]
• Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue , 1524, oil on canvas, Wawel , Cracow [11]
• Frescoes in several halls of the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento

• 

  Portrait of a Man, 1518/20

• 

  Sibylle , around 1524

• 

  Mythological scene, around 1524

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  Portrait of Laura Pisani, 1525

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  St. John and Bartholomew with donors, 1527

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  The Holy Family, 1527/28

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  Portrait of a warrior, 1530s

Auctions

• 1825 in Nuremberg : Christ on the cross, whose trunk includes St. Magdalena.

literature

• Henriette Mendelsohn : The work of the Dossi . Georg Müller & Eugen Rentsch, Munich 1914.
• Henriette Mendelsohn: Dossi, Dosso . In: Ulrich Thieme (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 9 : Delaulne-Dubois . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1913, p. 496-500 ( Text Archive - Internet Archive ).
• Felton Gibbons: Dosso and Battista Dossi. Court painters at Ferrara (= Princeton monographs in art and archeology 39). Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1968.
• Christoph Schmitt: About remembering in the court art of Alfonso d'Este. An art historical attempt on the theory of cultural memory using the example of allegorical-mythological paintings. Dissertation Hamburg 2005 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Dosso Dossi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Dosso Dossi in the catalog of the Königliche Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden (1887)  - sources and full texts

• Dosso Dossi on Google Arts & Culture
• The National Gallery
• Webgallery of Art
• Works by Dosso Dossi at Census of Ferrarese Paintings and Drawings

Individual evidence

1. ↑ directory via the v.Derschauische Kunstkabinett to Nuremberg .... Nuremberg, in which committed Auctionator Schmidmer. 1825. 250 p. Directory of rare art collections. 1825 . Google Books, online , p. 21. He modified the same painting as an altarpiece in Ferrara Cathedral .