St John on Patmos or a Philospher(Giovanni Luteri, called Dosso Dossi)
GIOVANNI LUTERI called DOSSO DOSSI
Saint John on Patmos or An Allegory of Poetry
Oil on Canvas, 60 5/8 x 47 5/8 in.
(154 x 121 cm.)
PROVENANCE: A. L. Nicolson collection, Bournemouth, c. 1920;
Sold Christies, London, 12 May 1935, lot 71;
Arthur Rosner, Tel Aviv, until 1978;
Art Advisory S.A. collection;
The Matthiesen Gallery, London, 1984;
From whom acquired by Barbara Piasecka Johnson
Collection, Princeton 1987.
EXHIBITED: London, Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., From Borso to Cesare
DEste: The School of Ferrara 1450-1628, 1984, no. 41a, pp.
89-90, pl.42.
Ferrara, Galleria dArte Moderna e Contemporanea; New
York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Los Angeles, The J. Paul
Getty Museum, Dosso Dossi Court Painter in Renaissance
Ferrara, 1999, no. 22b, pp. 138-144, colour pl.22b.
LITERATURE: U. Middeldorf, Die Dossi in Rom, in Festschrift für Herbert von Einem, Berlin, 1965, pp. 171-172.
A. Mezzetti, Dosso e Battista Ferraresi, Ferrara, 1965, pp. 25-26, 72, 92; no. 81, fig. 36a.
F. Gibbons, Dosso and Battista Dossi, Princeton, 1968, pp. 138-9; 188-9, 209-210; no. 73, fig. 107.
A. M. Fioravanti Baraldi, in Bastianino e la pittura a Ferrara nel secondo Cinquecento, exh.cat., Bologna 1985, no.1.
A. Ballarin, Osservazione dul percorso del Dosso, in the Acts of a conference held at the Seminario di Storia dellArte, Padua,11 June 1986.
D. McTavish, (editor), Telling Images. Selections from the Bader Gift of European Paintings to Queens University, exhibition catalogue, Kingston, Ontario, 1988-9.
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Central Italian and North Italian Schools, ed. London 1968, vol. I, p.113 & vol. III, fig. 1750.
E. Mattaliano & P. Matthiesen (editors) in Da Borso a Cesare dEste: La Scuola di Ferrara 1450-1628, 1985, Italian expanded catalogue of the Matthiesen exhibition with the Acts of the Symposium held at The Courtauld Institute, London in 1984, pp. 107-8, no. 41a, pl. XLII.
A. Ballerin in Le Siècle de Titien: LAge dor de la peinture à Venise, exh. cat., section on Dosso Dossi, 1993, Paris, Petit Palais, p. 411.
A. Ballerin, Dosso Dossi La Pittura a Ferrara negli anni del Ducato di Alfonso I, I, Citadella, no. 408, p. 323, also pp. 44-4 & 79-80, colour pl. CLVIII, vol I & vol. II, pl. 579.
V. Romani, Alfonso I, Dosso e la maniera moderna in La Pittura in Emilia e Romagna: Il Cinquecento, edited by V. Fortunati, 1996, vol. II, pp. 88-104.
This painting was first published by Middeldorf, together with an analogous painting formerly in the Bader collection, Milwaukee (now donated to Queens University, Kingston, Ontario).1 The subject matter of the painting has evaded positive identification. It was proposed that the two pictures belonged to a series portraying various Learned Men of Antiquity. Subsequently, Mezzetti published a third painting, now in the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, suggesting that the three known paintings might instead form a series of the Four Apostles.2 She based her hypothesis on the fact that the Milwaukee figure also depicted a lion crouching at his feet and might therefore be identified as Saint Mark. This proposal was lent further weight when this painting was cleaned in 1983-4 and the existence of a previously over-painted window and landscape behind the main figure was revealed with distinct traces of a halo above the figure’s head. Matthiesen and Mattaliano in consequence proposed an alternative identification for the figure as young Saint John on Patmos.
Gibbons had retained the original identification,3 while alternative suggestions identifying the figure as Jonah or with a figure representing one of the Seven Liberal Arts have also been put forward.4 A connection with Jonah seemed plausible when two companion figures were rediscovered in 1983-4 and exhibited at Matthiesen, London that year. Gibbons dated them to the last years of Dosso’s life, and Volpe5 concurred suggesting a date around 1540 on account of obvious connections with other late works, such as the A1legory of Music (Florence, Horne Museum); all the works from this period are stamped with the same strongly Michelangelesque feeling, which derives from the Sistine ceiling. Mezzetti, however, is inclined to date Geometry and Astronomy considerably earlier, basing her contention on Middeldorf’s theory that the inspiration for the figures derives instead from Raphael’s Elijah and Lorenzetti’s Jonah in the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome which were apparently completed in 1522. Mezzetti, therefore, believes that these figures by Dosso must have been completed before 1530. The influence of Raphael is undeniable6 and a comparison of these figure types, more particularly Astronomy and Geometry, with drawings by Raphael for the Stanza dellHeliodorio in the Vatican underlines the grandiose, perfectly balanced compositions, with powerfully defined foreshortening.7
Recently Ballerin, in a series of publications cited above, has followed Mezzetti and proposed an even more precocious dating of 1520-21.
Despite the Roman influence, all the paintings retain strongly Ferrarese characteristics both in their exaggerated poses and also, more particularly, in the Venetian inspired chromatic values with their shot-colouring and splashes of vivid reds and orange, reminiscent of the small-scale works of Mazzolino and Dosso. The monumental figures occupy the front of the picture plane filling a barren, desert like space, which, in its economy of detail, serves to magnify the apparent scale of the compositions. The extremely mannered poses may find an explanation in the diffusion of mannerism throughout Italy, and particularly in Florence and Emilia after the Sack of Rome in 1527. In this, as Humfrey has pointed out, the figure style differs from Michelangelos Ignudi which appear more abstracted whereas Dossos figures, with their delicate chiaroscuro, look more like studio models.8 Humfrey expresses the view in the recent monographic exhibition that an earlier dating, as proposed by Mezzetti and Ballerin, is correct since the shadows in Dossos later works are markedly more pronounced and are absent in the gentle chiaroscuro present in all surviving five works from this series, of which this example is probably the best preserved.
The top edge of the canvas has at some time in the past been irregularly cut.9 In all probability this may be due to the paintings having been looted during the Napoleonic Wars and they probably were brought to England at that time, remaining there until at least the 1930s. However, it is also possible that if the five paintings currently known were originally intended to form diverse groups of perhaps Apostles and Sages or representations of the Liberal Arts, they may indeed have been adapted at a very early date to fit a particular location. Volpe, therefore, suggested that they may have been cut to form a frieze fitting under the ceiling of a vaulted room and although there is no documentary evidence, other experts have suggested that they may have formed part of the decorations of the library of the castle at Trent.
These monumental male figures which Volpe described as almost ‘athletic’, together with a rediscovered ceiling depicting the symbols of the zodiac in a palace in Ferrara and published by Mezzetti represent some of the most exciting discoveries of Dossos mature style in recent years. The fact that there are some details which perhaps appear to be unfinished (such as the hand in Astronomy holding the compass) might sustain the hypothesis for a very late dating, while, despite the fact that the figures are depicted with a di sotto in sú perspective, the quality of the musculature and the high finish of Dosso’s drapery would seem to suggest that they were not necessarily intended to be placed more than a few feet above the viewer’s eye-level. This would confirm Volpe’s supposition that the series was originally intended as the decoration of a private room, such as a study or library, rather than a public room or great hall. However, Humfrey points out that in his fresco frieze in Trent Dosso does not appear to be interested in illusionism or the viewers perspective,10 so once again the exact location and height that these paintings were intended to be placed at remains a matter of conjecture.
1 Middeldorf, 1965.
2 Mezzetti, 1965.
3 Gibbons, 1968.
4 Oral communication from the late Professor Federico Zen: the trivium of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric and the quadrivium of Geometry, Arithmetic, Astrology and Music.
5 Ms. Communication.
6 It was emphasised by Mattaliano in 1984 in an oral communication to Patrick Matthiesen.
7 See J. A. Gere and Nicholas Turner exhibition catalogue, Drawings by Raphael, British Museum, London, 1984, nos. 169 and 171, particularly noticeable when compared to Astronomy.
8 Dosso Dossi: Court Painter, 1999, pp.138-143.
9 All five known surviving figures which probably formed part of a larger decorative cycle had shaped tops either trapezoidal or, more probably, arched as seems to be indicated by Astronomy so as to fit high up under a vaulted ceiling.
10 Dosso Dossi: Court Painter