J. Paul Getty Museum

Peter Humfrey

Andrea Bayer

Dosso Dossi

Mauro Lucco

Imagination, sensual delight, a sharp wit - these qualities were enormously prized in sixteenth-century Ferrara, where one of the most cultured and powerful courts of the High Renaissance held sway, Dosso Dossi was the idiosyncratic, brilliant painter most responsible for turning those values into a glorious artistic reality. Dosso's rich color schemes are akin to those of his fellow North Italian Titian; he learned something about innovative composition from Raphael and about the force of the body from Michelangelo. But his paintings have a very individual appeal. In leafy natural surroundings containing an array of animals and heavenly bodies, events unfold that are often enigmatic, enacted by characters whose interrelationships elude definition. For this exhibition, almost all the surviving paintings have been brought together; in the catalogue entries each one receives a fresh and comprehensive scholarly discussion. The catalogue also contains essays that describe Dosso's artistic career and the highly charged world of the court at Ferrara and that probe the visual poetry and subtle wit of his work. The illuminating results of an extensive campaign of technical examination, undertaken in connection with the exhibition, are discussed and illustrated in additional essays and in observations that accompany the catalogue entries throughout.

Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara

William F. Prizer

Alessandro Nova

Burton B. Fredericksen

Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, Calif.)

Giovanni Romano

Michel Hochmann

Vincenzo Gheroldi

Adriano Franceschini

Jane Bridgeman

Craig Hugh Smyth

Andrea de Marchi

Franco Bacchelli

Jadranka Bentini

Albano Biondi

Luca D'Ascia

Dosso Dossi has long been considered one of Renaissance Italy's most intriguing artists. Although a wealth of documents chronicles his life, he remains, in many ways, an enigma, and his art continues to be as elusive as it is compelling. In Dosso's Fate, leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines examine the social, intellectual, and historical contexts of his art, focusing on the development of new genres of painting, questions of style and chronology, the influence of courtly culture, and the work of his collaborators, as well as his visual and literary sources and his painting technique. The result is an important and original contribution not only to literature on Dosso Dossi but also to the study of cultural history in early modern Italy.

Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy

Dosso's Fate

Mauro Lucco

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