No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Dosso's early artistic reputation and the origins of landscape painting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2011
Abstract
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © British School at Rome 2008
References
1 The current article is derived from the final chapter of my Ph.D. thesis, The Paintings of Dosso Dossi: Studies in the Artistic Currents and Court Culture of Renaissance Ferrara (Courtauld Institute, 2007). I would like to thank William Hood, who first suggested I consider Dosso as a dissertation topic, and Patricia Rubin for her suggestions and comments throughout the research and writing process. With regards to the current topic, Professor Rubin's thoughts on Renaissance criticism and historiography have been invaluable. I would also like to thank Peter Humfrey, Paul Hills, Sue Russell and Alan Chong for their comments, and Elizabeth Frank for reading an early draft of the article. My thoughts on Dosso, landscape and the artist's early artistic reputation were first formulated as a talk given at the British School at Rome in September 2002: ‘Making landscape all'antica: Dosso Dossi, transalpine art and Giovio's parerga’; thank you to Helen Langdon and Beverly Louise Brown for their suggestions following the talk. A hearty thanks to Anne Guillemet of the Curatorial Department at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for tracking down publishable images and to Mauro Lucco for supplying colour photos of hard to find paintings. Josephine Crawley Quinn offered helpful editorial suggestions, for which I am very grateful.
2 For a full treatment of Giovio's career as a historian, physician and Medici associate, see Zimmermann, T.C.P., Paolo Giovio: the Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-century Italy (Princeton, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 ‘Of all the painters in Lombardy, Dosso had the reputation of executing landscapes better than am other’; Vasari, G., Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nella redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Bettarini, R., commentary Barocchi, P. (Florence, 1966), IV, 420Google Scholar.
4 For the relationship between the hvo historians and the project of the ‘Lives’, see Rubin, P., Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven, 1995), 107Google Scholar , 151, 178.
5 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 420–2. For Dosso at Pesaro, see Smyth, C.H., ‘On Dosso Dossi at Pesaro’, in Ciammitti, L., Ostrow, S.F. and Settis, S. (eds), Dosso's Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles, 1998), 241–62Google Scholar.
6 For an overview of Dosso's career, see Bayer, A., ‘Dosso's public: the Este court of Ferrara’, in Humfrey, P. and Lucco, M., Dosso Dossi, Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara (New York, 1998), 27–54Google Scholar. For a comparison between the patronage Dosso enjoyed under Alfonso and that of his successor, see Colby, The Paintings of Dosso Dossi (above, n. 1), 11–30. For individual paintings, see the exhaustive catalogue entries in Ballarin, A., Dosso Dossi: la pittura a Penara negli anni del ducato di Alfonso I, 2 vols (Cittadella, 1994–1995)Google Scholar. See also Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter in Renaissance penara (above). For the documentation concerning Dosso's participation in the Via Coperta and Alfonso's other artistic endeavours see volumes 3 and 4 of Ballarin, A. (ed.), Il camerino delle pitture di Alfonso I, 6 vols (Cittadella, 2002–2004)Google Scholar. See also Borella, M. (ed.), Il progetto della Via Coperta: atti del convegno di studi, 11 ottobre 2002 (Ferrara, 2002)Google Scholar.
7 P. Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career as a landscape painter’, in Ciammitti, Ostrow and Settis (eds), Dosso's Fate (above, n. 5), 201–18.
8 Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 205–6.
9 Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 207. Ballarin dated the Three Ages of Man to 1517–18 and the Travellers in a Wood to 1517–18; Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6). cat. nos. 368 and 369 respectively.
10 Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 210.
11 Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), cat. no. 34, see esp. p. 196.
12 Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 209–10. For the dating of the altarpiece, see Cremonini, C., ‘La pala dell'Immacolata Concezione di Dosso Dossi nel Duomo di Modena’, Dialoghi di Storia dell'Arte 4–5 (1997), 250–7Google Scholar.
13 For the Mythological Allegory see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 454 (1529); Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), cat. no. 59 (1529–30).
14 For the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 466; Humfrey and Lacco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), eat. no. 52. All three versions of the Flight into Egypt are roughly the same size, that is, around 60 × 80 cm. For the Flight into Egypt in the Lowe Art Museum, Miami, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 463. For the version formerly of the Fesch Collection, currently at Colnaghi's, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 465. I am grateful to ‘I’im Warner-Johnson of Colnaghi's for kindly supplying me with a transparency of the painting and for his thoughts on the unusual iconography. For the version formerly of the Harck Collection, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 464. Another version of the Flight into Egypt attributed to the Dossi appeared at auction in Venice in 1979: Semenzato, 25 February 1979, no. 367, measuring 62 × 80 cm: Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), I, 352.
15 Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), II, fig. 563.
16 For attributions of the respective paintings see the catalogue entries cited in n. 14. See also M. Lucco. ‘Battista Dossi and Sebastiano Filippi’, in Ciammitti, Ostrow and Settis (eds), Dosso's Fate (above, n. 5), 263–87.
17 For the collaboration between the two brothers, which increased around 1530 when Battista began to operate as a master in his own right, See Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), 11–15.
18 For landscape alla fiamminga, see below, pp. 221–6.
19 Friedländer, M.J., Essays über die Landschaftsmalerei und Andere Bildgattungen (The Hague, 1947)Google Scholar. This was the basis of subsequent phenomenological approaches to the question of landscape. See, for example, Clark, K., Landscape into Art (London, 1949)Google Scholar ; Turner, R., The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar ; Romano, G., Studi sul paesaggio: storia e immagini (Turin, 1991)Google Scholar.
20 Friedländer, Essays (above, n. 19), 58.
21 Gombrich, E.H., ‘Renaissance artistic theory and the development of landscape painting’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 41 (1953), 335–60Google Scholar , esp p. 335. This was re-edited as ‘The Renaissance theory of art and the rise of landscape’, in Gombrich, E.H., Norm and Form, Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London, 1966), 107–21Google Scholar.
22 Barocchi, P., Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento, 3 vols (Milan/Naples, 1971), I, 18Google Scholar ; ‘The elegant talent of Dosso of Ferrara is proven in his proper works, but most of all in those that are called parerga. For pursuing with pleasurable labour the delightful diversions of painting, he used to depict jagged rocks, green groves, the firm banks of traversing rivers, the flourishing work of the countryside, the joyful and feryid toil of the peasants, and also the distant prospects of land and sea, fleets, fowling, hunting, and all those sorts of things so agreeable to the eyes in an extravagant and festive manner’. Translated in Wood, C.S., Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London, 1993), 55Google Scholar.
23 Gombrich, ‘Renaissance artistic theory’ (above, n. 21), and Gilbert, C., ‘On subject and not subject in Italian Renaissance pictures’, The Art Bulletin 34 (1952), 202–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Pliny, Historia Naturalis 35, 116–17. ‘Studius too, of the period of the Divine Augustus, must not be cheated of his due. He first introduced the most attractive fashion of painting walls with villas, porticoes (harbours?), and landscape gardens, groves, woods, hills, fish-pools, canals, rivers, coasts — whatever one could wish, and in them various representations of people strolling about, people sailing, people travelling overland to villas on donkey-back or in carriages, and in addition people fishing, fowling, hunting, or even gathering the vintage. His pictures include noble villas reached across marshes, men tottering along with women, trembling burdens, on their shoulders, carried for a wager, and very many such lively and witty subjects besides. It was the same man who introduced the practice of painting seaside cities in open terraces, producing a charming effect with minimal expense.’ Translation from Ling, R., ‘Studius and the beginnings of Roman landscape painting’. Journal of Roman Studies 67 (1977), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 1.
25 Pliny, Historia Naturalis 35.101.
26 Colonna, F., Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 2 vols, ed. Pozzi, G. and Ciapponi, L.A. (Padua, 1964), I, 53Google Scholar ; this was first identified by Buscaroli, R., La pittura di paesaggio in Italia (Bologna, 1935), 26Google Scholar.
27 Battisti, E., Rinascimento e Barocco (Turin, 1960), 148–9Google Scholar. See also Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer (above, n. 22), 59.
28 Gilbert, ‘On subject and not subject’ (above, n. 23).
29 Venturi, A., ‘Arte ferrarese del Rinsacimento’, L'Arte 28 (1925), 89–109.Google Scholar
30 Gilbert, ‘On subject and not subject’ (above, n. 23); Faietti, too, considered paintings such as the Three Ages of Man to be examples of what Giovio might have seen while in Ferrara — Faietti, M., ‘1490–1530: influssi nordici in alcuni artisti emiliani e romagnoli’, in Fortunati, V. (ed.), La pittura in Emilia e in Romagna, 2 vols (Milan, 1995), I, 9–47Google Scholar , see esp. p. 33 — as did Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 206–9.
31 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer (above, n. 22), 58–9.
32 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer (above, n. 22), 59 n. 179.
33 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer (above, n. 22), 59.
34 Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer (above, n. 22), 54–5 and 59–61, citing especially Derrida's, JacquesLa vérité en peinture (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar , ch. I: ‘Parergon’.
35 There is one exception, Giorgione's Tempesta, referred to as ‘El paesetto in tela’: [Michiel, Marcantonio], Notizia d'opere di disegno, pubblicata e illustrata da D. Jacopo Morelli, ed. Frizzoni, G. (Bologna, 1884), 218Google Scholar.
36 These uses of the word, among others, appear in the notes of the Grimani collection: Michiel, Notizia (above, n. 35), 195–6. Other paintings that surely would have included landscape elements were not described as depicting paesi, for example, ‘La nostra Donna can S. Iseppe nel deserto fu de man de Zuan Scorei d'Olanda’, p. 218.
37 ‘Sixteen landscape paintings in a frieze below said ceiling … gilded frieze and cornice above and below these paintings.’ The 1598 inventory, which describes the ceiling of one room adorned with a series of oval-shaped paintings (later cut into rhomboids) and a landscape frieze, was first published by Mezzetti, A., Il Dosso e Battista Ferraresi (Milan, 1965)Google Scholar , as a nine-page non-numbered facsimile following p. 135. See also Ballarin, Il camerino (above, n. 6), III, 274–8. For the paintings now known as the Allegorical Rhomboids, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), eat. nos. 411, 417–21, 426. See also, Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), cat. nos. 26a–26g, and Humfrey, P., ‘Allegory with three Boys’, in MMI (New York, 2001), 78–81.Google Scholar The surviving paintings can be associated with the 1598 inventory because of a lengthy correspondence arranging their transferral out of Ferrara in 1608, with some of the paintings going to Cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome and others to Cesare d'Este in Modena. The full correspondence can be found in Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), I, 511–30.
38 The payments are published in Ballarin, Il camerino (above, n. 6), IV, 346–9.
39 ‘Sixteen other little paintings of landscape that would sene for a frieze in a chamber.’ Ballarin, Il camerino (above, n. 6), III, 318 and IV, 566–7.
40 ‘a frieze … of rare landscapes’; ‘most stupendous room’. This connection was first made by Mezzetti, Il Dosso e Battista Venarea (above, n. 37), 137 (not numbered). Scannelli, F., Il microcosmo della pittura, ed. Giubbini, G. (Milan, 1966), 316–17Google Scholar.
41 Campori, G., Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventari inediti di quadri, statue, disegni, bronzi, dorerie, smalti, medaglie, arorii, ecc. (Modena, 1870), 309–35Google Scholar , esp. pp. 322–3.
42 ‘Twelve paintings of landscape by the hand of the Dossi with smooth, gilded ‘antique’ frames’: Campori, Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventari (above, n. 41), 322.
43 ‘Four paintings by the hand of the Dossi’; ‘A landscape by the Dossi with a man dressed in black riding a mule’: Campori, Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventari (above, n. 41), 323.
44 Thorton, P., The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–1600 (New York, 1991), 33–53Google Scholar.
45 For the cornices as a decorative element in the Via Coperta interior, see Ballarin, Il camerino (above, n. 6), IV, 336–44.
46 For the Three Ages of Man, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 368; Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), cat. no. 10. For the Travellers in a Wood, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 369; Humfrey and Lucco, Dosso Dossi, Court Painter (above, n. 6), cat. no. 11. For the Countryside Scene, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), cat. no. 401 (attributed to Battista). Lucco considered it an anonymous seventeenth-century copy: Lucco, ‘Battista Dossi and Sebastiano Filippi’ (above, n. 16), 270, fig. 6.
47 Ballarin associated the Countryside Scene with the 1685 inventory of Cesare Ignazio d'Este: Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), I, 321. He did not associate any of the other paintings, the Three Ages or Travellers in a Wood, with the Modenese collection. The Countryside Scene was later in the collection of Countess Sophie d'Almeida and then Princess Hélène Wrede, before appearing at auction (with an attribution to Dosso) in Sotheby's Old Master Sale, New York, 15 January 1993, lot 70. Its current whereabouts are unknown.
48 For the Landscape with Shepherds and Soldiers, see Lucco, ‘Battista Dossi and Sebastiano Filippi’ (above, n. 16), 270, fig. 7; for the fragment, see Ballarin, Dosso Dossi (above, n. 6), eat. no. 370.
49 For the association between Dosso's landscapes and the delizie see Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 207. An early but still useful study of Este villas can be found in Pazzi, G., Le delizie estensi e l'Ariosto (Pescara, 1933)Google Scholar. For a recent treatment with updated bibliography, see Tosi, L., ‘Origine, sviluppo e decadenza delle delizie estensi nel ducato di Ferrara (1385–1598)’, Musei Ferraresi 18 (1999), 40–54Google Scholar.
50 Forti Grazzini, N., L'arazzo ferrarese (Milan, 1982), 16–50Google Scholar.
51 Forti Grazzini, L'arazzo ferrarese (above, n. 50), 51–5.
52 Forti Grazzini, L'arazzo ferrarese (above, n. 50), 56. See also Forti Grazzini, N., ‘Arazzi di Bruxelles in Italia, 1480–1555. Tracce per un catalogo’, in Castelnuovo, E. (ed.), Gli arazzi del cardinale: Bernardo Cles e il ciclo della Passione di Pieter ran Aelst (Trento, 1990), 35–71Google Scholar ; Forti Grazzini, N., ‘Flemish weavers in Italy in the sixteenth century’, in Delmarccl, G. (ed.), Flemish Tapestry Weavers Abroad: Emigration and the Founding of Manufactories in Europe (Leuven, 2002), 131–62Google Scholar.
53 The unpublished inventory has been discussed by Forti Grazzini, L'arazzo ferrarese (above, n. 501, 56. Archivio Stato di Modena, Camera ducale, Amministrazione della casa, arazzi e tappezzerie, reg. n. 14 bis, Inventario delle tapczarie, 1529.
54 Müntz, E., Les arts à la cour des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle; recueil de documents inédits tirés des archives et des bibliothèques romaines, 3 vols (Paris, 1878–82, reprint, 1983), II, 310Google Scholar.
55 Forti Grazzini, L'arazzo ferrarese (above, n. 50), 59, n. 74.
56 For the iconography and dating of the Shepherd and Shepherdess Making Music (1500–30), see Cavallo, A.S., Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1993), cat. no. 35. See pp. 485–7 for examples of related subjectsGoogle Scholar.
57 The Falconer with Two Ladies, a Page, and a Foot Soldier is dated 1500 to 1530. For its variants and iconography, see Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries (above, n. 56), cat. no. 36.
58 Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries (above, n. 56), 491.
59 This is the essential conclusion drawn by Humfrey regarding these paintings: Humfrcy, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 209.
60 For Giovio's early activity, see Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 20–7.
61 This was first mentioned by Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 511. See also Costamagna, P., Pontormo (Milan, 1994), cat. no. 54, for the inventionsGoogle Scholar.
62 Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 34, n. 40.
63 See above, n. 38.
64 For an evocative description of Giovio's Isehian retreat, see Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 86–105; for the building of the museum, see pp. 159–62, 187–9.
65 For the dialogue, see Barocchi, Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento (above, n. 22), I, 19–23. See also Zimmermann, T.C.P., ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’, in Clough, C.H. (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance, Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristelle (Manchester, 1976), 406–24Google Scholar, esp. pp. 410–12. For the dating of De Viris Illustrious to around 1528, see n. 50.
66 See also Giovio, P., Scritti d'arte: lessico ed ecfrasi, ed. Maffei, S. (Pisa, 1999), 221–32Google Scholar. For the topos of imitation and individual talent in relation to the Renaissance revival of Roman rhetoric, see Baxandall, M., Giotto and the Orator: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450 (Oxford, 1971), 1–50Google Scholar.
67 The full text of the dialogue is published in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 216–19.
68 The complete passage reads: ‘Doxium imagines rigidae, vivaces, convolutae, effumidis adumbratae coloribus mire delectant, quae tametsi in eadem re certius exprimenda et specie varia sint et dissimilia, summam tarnen omnes alios modo, uti genii iudiciaque tulerunt, excellentis industriae commendationem accipiunt’ (Barocchi, Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento (above, n. 22), I, 22–3). ‘Dosso is wonderfully delighted by images that are rough, vivacious, intertwined and shaded with smoky colours; and although in expressing, surely, the same nature and appearance of things the works of these painters are varied and dissimilar, nonetheless, as tastes and judgement have disposed, they have all received, each in his own way, the highest commendation for excellence’: translation by Zimmermann, ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’ (above, n. 56), 412.
69 Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 231, n. 88.
70 Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 231.
71 Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 231.
72 Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 231.
73 Zimmermann, ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’ (above, n. 65), 415, 422–3, n. 50.
74 Zimmermann, ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’ (above, n. 65), 415. See also Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 207–8.
75 Zimmermann, ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’ (above, n. 65), 414–15. See also Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 231–2.
76 For the dating of the Dialogus de Viris et Foeminis, see Zimmermann, ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’ (above, n. 65), 418; Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 276–7.
77 Dialogus de Viris et Foeminis Aetate Nostra Florentibus, in Pauli Iovii Opera, IX, Dialogi et descrip-tiones, eds E. Travi and M. Penco (Rome, 1984), 197. ‘It pleases me much, these pleasant paths with which we see the discourse of our argument, not so differently than in a painted picture, where one praises not the figures rendered with elegance in conformity with the criteria of the painter, as much as the details (parerga) in the background rendered always smaller in succession according to the laws of perspectival views, in which there are hunts, woods, springs, shepherd's huts and figures composed from moving clouds, that are painted with unrehearsed richness of ornament by a hand expert in detaining the eye of the spectator in pleasant dissimulation’; trans. Gregory Crane.
78 Maffei in Giovio, Scritti d'arte (above, n. 66), 276, n. 103; for Raphael's biography, pp. 260–3, for a discussion of Raphael's grottesques and his ‘lascivo penicillo’, pp. 268–70.
79 For the meaning of otium in the Renaissance, which was problematic due to its associations with turpitude, see Vickers, B., ‘Leisure and idleness in the Renaissance: the ambivalence of otium’, Renaissance Studies 4 (1990), 1–7, 107–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
80 Cicero, Orator 38–9, 42 in Brutus and Orator, trans. G.L. Hendrickson and H.M. Hubbell (Cambridge (MA), 1939), 333, 335, 337.
81 Cicero, Orator (above, n. 80), 42, p. 337.
82 Cicero, Orator (above, n. 80), 208, p. 481.
83 Kennedy, G.A., Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill, 1999), 226Google Scholar.
84 To use Wood's translation: see above, n. 22.
85 By the sixteenth century, the use of rhetorical concepts to fashion terms of art criticism was quite common. See Vickers, B., In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford, 1988), 343–54Google Scholar. The pioneering study linking the revival of ancient rhetoric to the origins of Renaissance art criticism is Baxandall, M., Ciotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar. See also Goldstein, C., ‘Rhetoric and art history in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque’, The Art Bulletin 73 (1991), 641–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 Vitruvius, De Architectura 7.5.2: ‘Then they proceeded to imitate the contours of buildings, the outstanding projections of columns and gables; in open spaces, like exedrae, they designed scenery on a large scale in tragic, comic, and satyric style; in covered promenades, because of the length of the walls, they used for ornament the varieties of landscape gardening, finding subjects in the characteristics of particular places; for they paint harbours, headlands, shores, rivers, springs, straits, temples, groves, hills, cattle, shepherds’; Vitrinins. De Architectura, 2 vols, trans. F. Granger (London, 1961–2), 11, 103. In book 5.6.9, Vitruvius first mentioned the tripartite division of theatrical modes and the satyrie register depicting landscape.
87 Alberti, L.B., On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans, Rykwert, J., Leach, N. and Tavernor, R. (Cambridge (MA)/London, 1988), 299Google Scholar.
88 Zimmermann, ‘The evolution of Renaissance art criticism’ (above, n. 65), 418, n. 70. For the letter see Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 4–5 , and Della Torre, S., ‘L'inedita opera prima di Paolo Giovio ed il museo: l'interesse di un umanista per il tema della villa’, in Atti del convegno Paolo Giovio, il Rinascimento e la memoria (Conio, 1985), 283–91Google Scholar. For Pliny's letters on his villas, see de la Ruffinière du Prcy, P., The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity (Chicago/London, 1994)Google Scholar.
89 For the museum, sec Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 187–9, 206–8.
90 Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 5.
91 The literature on Giovio's villa and museum is considerable. See Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio (above, n. 2), 159–62, 206–8.
92 The literature on Flemish art in fifteenth-century Ferrara is extensive. For a recent treatment of the topic with previous bibliography, see Campbell, L., ‘Cosrnè Tura and Netherlandish art’, in Campbell, S. and Chong, A. (eds), Cosmè Tura: Painting and Design in Renaissance Ferrara (Boston, 2002), 71–105Google Scholar.
93 For a recent review of the literature on the north Italian reception of Flemish painting, see the essays collected in Lcmentani-Virdis, C. (ed.), La pittura fiamminga nel Veneto e nell'Emilia (Verona, 1997)Google Scholar ; Aikema, B. and Brown, B.L. (eds), Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Dürer, Bellini and Titian (New York/London, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Dixon, L.S. (ed.), In Detail: New Studies of Northern Renaissance Art in Honor of Walter S. Gibson (Turnhout, 1998), 37–47Google Scholar. There are numerous examples of Flemish painting cited in Michiel, Notizia (above, n. 35), 173, 178, 195–7, 208, 218, 219. In 1535 Matteo del Nassaro brought 300 Flemish paintings to Italy and sold 120 to Federico II Gonzaga: Snlzberger, S., ‘Matteo del Nassaro et la transmission des oeuvres flamandes en France et en Italie’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 55 (1960), 147–50Google Scholar, esp. p. 149. For this purchase and the intended project for their installation , see Brown, C.M., ‘Pictures in the Ducal Palace in Mantua, among them a collection of ‘Quadri de Fiandra’’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 44 (1981), 53–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Rebecchini, G., ‘Exchanges of works of art at the court of Federico II Gonzaga with an appendix on Flemish art’, Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 381–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
94 ‘as for German landscapes, there is no cobbler's house without one’. Barocchi, P. (ed.), Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento fra manierismo e controrifonna (Bari, 1960–1961), 61Google Scholar.
95 For the altarpiece, see Fioravanti-Baraldi, A., Il Garofalo: Benvenuto Tisi, pittore (c. 1476–1559). Catalogo generale (Ferrara, 1993)Google Scholar , cat. no. 129. For the Capriccio, see Turner, R., ‘Garofalo and a Capriccio alla Fiamminga’, Paragone 181 (1965), 60–9Google Scholar. For the troubled attributional history of the painting, see Della Pergola, P., Galleria Borghese: i dipinti, 2 vols (Rome, 1955), I, cat. no. 12Google Scholar.
96 Friedländer was the first to identify the ‘Master’; see Friedländer, M.J., Die Altniederländische Malerei (Berlin, 1924–1937)Google Scholar ; Friedländer, M.J., Early Netherlandish Painting, 16 vols (Leiden, 1967–1761, XII, 18–21Google Scholar. See also Koch, R.A., Joachim Patinir (Princeton, 1968)Google Scholar ; Gibson, W.S., ‘Mirror of the Earth’: The World Landscape on Sixteenth-century Flemish Painting (Princeton, 1989), 15–16Google Scholar. More recently, see Konowitz, E., ‘The Master of the Female Half-lengths group, eclecticism and novelty’, Oud Holland 113 (1999), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Heineman, T. (ed.), Uppsala University Art Collection: Painting and Sculpture (Uppsala, 2001), 156–7Google Scholar ; Vergara, E., Patinir: Essays and Critical Catalogue (Madrid, 2007), 264–5Google Scholar.
97 Konowitz, E., ‘Master of the Female Half-lengths group’, in Turner, J. (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols (New York, 1996), XX, 664–6Google Scholar.
98 For Flemish paintings in the Weltlandschaft tradition in Italy, see Gibson, ‘Mirror of the Earth’ (above, n. 96), 37–47.
99 Humfrey, ‘Two moments in Dosso's career’ (above, n. 7), 210.
100 For a reconstruction of his itinerary, which appeared in the ‘Life’ of Garofalo from the second edition, see Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), V, 409, 414, 418.
101 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), V, 78–9.
102 Rubin, Giorgio Vasari (above, n. 4), 135.
103 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), V, 417–18.
104 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 419–23.
105 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 419–20. ‘About the same time that Heaven presented to Ferrara, or rather, to the world, the divine Lodovico Ariosto, there was born in the same city the painter Dosso, who, although he was not as rare among painters as Ariosto among poets, nevertheless acquitted himself in his art in such a manner, that, besides the great esteem wherein his works were held in Ferrara, his merits caused the learned poet, his intimate friend, to honour his memory by mentioning him in his most celebrated writings; so that the pen of Messer Lodovico has given more renown to the name of Dosso than did all the brushes and colours that he used in the whole of his life. Wherefore I, for my part, declare that there could be no greater good-fortune than that of those who are celebrated by such great men, since the might of the pen forces most of mankind to accept their fame, even though they may not wholly deserve it.’ Vasari, G., Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 2 vols, trans. de Vere, G. (New York, 1996), I, 868Google Scholar.
106 Orlando furioso XXXIII. 1–2: ‘Such ancient painters as Parrhasius, /Zeuxis, Timàgoras, Protògenes, / Apollodore and Polvgnotus, / Timanthes and Alexander's Àpelles, / Whose names for ever will be known to us / (In spite of Clotho and her cruelties) /As long as men shall write and men shall read / What artists' hands in former ages did, /And those of recent times, or living still, /Leonardo and Mantegna and the two /Named Dossi, Gian Bellino, he whose skill / In paint and marble may be likened to the Angel Michael's, Bastian, Raphael, / And Titian to whose mastery is due / Such glon, that Urbino shares no more, / And Venice shines no brighter, than Cador’. Orlando furioso, 2 vols, trans. B. Reynolds (New York, 1977), 279.
107 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 420, 422.
108 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 420–2.
109 Smyth, ‘On Dosso Dossi at Pesaro’ (above, n. 5), 243, nn. 22–4.
110 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), IV, 420.
111 In the Life of Titian, Vasari mentioned the Camerino and a somewhat confused description of Dosso's paintings therein, a ‘Vulcano [in una grotta] con due fabbri alla fucina’ and ‘istorie di Knea, di Marte e Venere’: Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), VI, 158. In the Life of Girolamo da Carpi, he mentioned Dosso's contribution to the Camerino again, this time as ‘una Baccanaria d'uomini’ (V, 417).
112 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 5), IV, 420–2. ‘Dosso was much beloved by Duke Alfonso of Ferrara: first for his good abilities in the art of painting, and then because he was a very pleasant and amiable person — a manner of man in whom the Duke greatly delighted. Dosso had the reputation in Lombardy of executing landscapes better than any other painter engaged in that branch of the profession, whether in mural painting, in oil, or in gouache; and all the more after the German manner became known. In Ferrara, for the Cathedral Church, he executed a panel-picture with figures in oils, which was held to be passing beautiful; and in the Duke's Palace he painted niany rooms, in company with a brother of his, called Battista. These two were always enemies, one against the other, although they worked together. In the court of the said palace they executed stories of Hercules in chiaroscuro, with an endless number of nudes on those walls; and in like manner they painted many works on panel and in fresco throughout all Ferrara. By their hands is a panel in the Cathedral of Modena; and they painted many things in the Cardinal's Palace at Trent, in company with other painters. They were summoned to Pesaro by the Duke Francesco Maria … Ultimately Dosso, having grown old, spent his last years without working, being pensioned by Duke Alfonso, but despite this, he fell ill and shortly passed away. And in the end Battista survived him, executing many works by himself, and maintaining himself in good condition. Dosso was buried in Ferrara, his patria, and his priman fame was in painting landscapes well’, translation adapted from Vasari, Lives (above, n. 105), I, 868–9. (De Vere translated the 1568 edition, whereas I have referred to the 1550 edition. The editions are almost identical, except for small but important differences, such as the final pronouncement about Dosso's reputation (which appears only in the earlier edition).)
113 Gibbons, K., Dosso and Battista Dossi: Court Painters at Ferrara (Princeton, 1968), 150Google Scholar . While the author mentioned the fact that Fomari's discussion of Dosso preceded Vasari's as the first treatment of the artist after his death, lie did not mention the similarity of the latter to the former.
114 Pomari, S., La spositione di M. Simon Vornan da Rheggio sopra l'Orlando furioso di M. Ludovico Ariosto, 2 vols (Florence, 1549–1550), 1, 511–12Google Scholar. ‘The painter Dosso of Ferrara was much beloved by Duke Alfonso for the beautiful qualities of his art as much as his amiableness, such that the duke greatly delighted in him. He had in Lombardy the title amongst all painters that ever were of best imitating landscapes whether in fresco, or in oil, or in gouache. In Ferrara he painted for the duke an infinity of rooms along with his brother, Battista, with whom he was always hostile. It was also him [Battista] that Ariosto intended in naming the two Dossi, as we see [in Orlando furioso]. They worked in Modena, in Faenza, in Trent for the cardinal, and in Pesaro for Duke Francesco Maria. Dosso died in old age and was buried in Ferrara, leaving behind his brother Battista, who lived on maintaining himself in good condition’ (my translation).
115 Fornan, La spositione (above, n. 114), I, 28. See also B. Mon, ‘Le vite ariostesche del Fornari, Pigna e Garofalo’, Schifanoia 17–18 (1997), 135–78, esp. p. 135. For Fornari, see Contarino, R., ‘Simone Fornari’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1967-), XLIX, 80–2Google Scholar.
116 In the collected accounts of Flemish artists he described their shared style as the maniera fiamminga, but then, without comment, included Dürer as amongst its practitioners. Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), VI, 224–9, esp. p. 224. In the Life of Pontonno he described how artists from both the Low Countries and German) came to Italy to learn the maniera italiana, and thus cast off the collective maniera tedesca (V, 320).
117 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), I, 66.
118 For an example of this, see Vasari's criticism of Pontonno: Vite (above, n. 3), V, 320–2.
119 ‘in the Italian manner that his paintings were not recognized as by the hand of a Fleming’: Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), VI, 224.
120 Vasari gave an example in a painting by Titian: Vite (above, n. 3), VI, 1 56.
121 P. Pino, Dialogo di pittura, in Barocchi, Trattati d'arte (above, n. 4), 93–140, see esp. pp. 133–4. F. de Hollanda, Da pintura antigua, ed. J. de Vaseoncellos (Porto, 1930), 188–9.
122 Vasari, Vite (above, n. 3), V, 410–11.
123 See above, n. 112.