Giovanni di Niccolò de Lutero called Dosso Dossi

Commissioned by Alfonso I d'Este (1476 - 1534), Duke of Ferrara for the camerino d'alabastro, Castello Estense, Ferrara, circa 1518;
By descent to his son, Ercole II d'Este (1508 - 1559);
By descent to his son, Alfonso II d'Este (1533 - 1597);
From whom passed to Cardinal Scipione Borghese  (1577 - 1633), Rome, circa .1607;
By descent to Giovan Battista Borghese (1639 - 1717), Prince of Rossano, Palazzo Borghese, Campo Marzio, Rome.

This previously unpublished painting is a fragment of the superb, ten piece frieze with scenes from the Aeneid commissioned by Alfonso d’Este (1476 – 1534), Duke of Ferrara, for the decoration of his private study.  The camerino was situated at the heart of the duke’s sumptuous personal apartments and formed a raised walkway which linked the fortress-like Castello Estense to the Palazzo Ducale.  Famed for its opulence, the room was later named the camerino d’alabastro after its exquisite marble decorations.  While the study was essentially Alfonso’s inner sanctum, guests were nonetheless invited to admire its beauty; it was therefore necessary for the interior to reflect not only the Duke’s personal passions, but indeed his intellect and cultural eminence.¹  For the decoration of the room, Alfonso was determined to acquire a superlative series of paintings from Italy’s most preeminent artists.  Having failed to obtain paintings from Michelangelo, Raphael and Fra Bartolommeo, Alfonso succeeded in securing a work from Giovanni Bellini, whose Feast of the Gods, now in the National Gallery, Washington (inv. no. 1942.9.1), was completed in 1514.²   Between 1518 and 1525 the duke commissioned three canvases from Bellini’s virtuosic pupil, Titian: the Bacchus and Ariadne housed in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG35, fig. 1), the Bacchanal of the Andrians and the Worship of Venus, both now in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (inv. no. P00418), and from Dosso, a large Bacchanal with Vulcan (now lost). 

Above these large canvases hung Dosso’s exquisite frieze, its subject inspired by Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid.  Due to the fragmentary state of the present painting, an identification of the specific Virgilian reference is somewhat problematic, however, a study of the other existing canvases, the majority of which are intact, show that Dosso did not simply synopsize the journeys of Aeneas.  The artist chose instead to select specific episodes from the text that would allow him to depict scenes of games, hunting and leisure to reflect the aspirations and favored pursuits of his esteemed patron.³   In the fragment here we see figures seated at a table in the foreground playing a card game with tarocchi; while a group behind them play music and drink.  To the left, at the edge of the water, are two pilgrims, recognisable by their staffs and the scallop shell pinned to the shoulder of the male figure.  While the gaming and revelry fit with the general theme of Alfonso's camerino, why Dosso might have chosen this Christian motif for the Roman text is not immediately clear.  We know from the other canvases that Dosso's reinterpretaion of the text was often very loose, so it may be that the scene here refers to contemporary commentaries surrounding the Aeneid, or that the specific Virgilian reference was in the section of the canvas now lost.  

The camerino was renowned throughout Italy and passed intact to the following two generations of the Este family.  Though when the duke’s grandson, Alfonso II d’Este (1533 – 1597), died leaving no direct heir, catastrophically the entire duchy fell into papal hands in accordance with feudal law.  Pope Clement VIII and his nephew Pietro Aldobrandini were swift to take up residence in the Este palazzo and the pope reserved the camerino for his own private use.  When the time came to return to Rome six months later, they did so having appropriated the majority of its contents.  A decade later, Scipione Borghese turned to the Este home as a source from which to supplement the decorations for the Villa Borghese.  Scipione exploited his position as nephew to the current pope, Paul V, to claim works from Ferrara and obtained the Dosso Frieze which, having eluded Aldobrandini’s acquisitive eye, had remained in the camerino.

The paintings are included in Giovan Battista Borghese’s 1693 inventory from the Palazzo Borghese at Campo Marzio; however, due to Dosso’s liberal interpretation of Virgil’s text, the inventory taker had lost sight of their subject.  They are listed with ambiguous descriptions such as Campagne con diverse figure nude e vestite (“countryside with various figures nude and clothed”), making it impossible to decipher which of the entries might refer to the present painting.  The canvases do not appear in the subsequent inventory of 1790 and it can be assumed they had been dispersed before that date.  In 1964, two of the works were offered on the London art market:  Aeneas in the Elysian Fields (now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, inv. no. 14666), and Trojans on the Libyan Coast (now at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham).  Their discovery led to the recognition of a canvas in the Kress Collection  (at the National Gallery, Washington, inv. no. K-448), as a fragment presumably showing Aeneas and Achates overseeing the building of their fleet.  A further two canvases, appeared later on the art market, identifiable as the Sicilian Games and the Plague at Pergamea, both in a private collection (figs. 2 and 3 respectively), and, finally, a sixth complete canvas was discovered in a Roman private collection.⁵

We are grateful to Keith Christiansen and Alessandro Ballarin for independently recognizing this lot as a lost fragment from the d'Este Aeneid frieze, and to both him and Andrea Bayer for supporting an attribution to Giovanni di Niccolò de Lutero called Dosso Dossi, upon first hand inspection.

1.  K. Christiansen, “Dosso Dossi’s Aeneas frieze for Alfonso d’Este’s Camerino”, in Apollo, January 2000, p. 36.
2.  Following Bellini’s death in 1516, Alfonso d’Este commissioned Dosso, and later Titian, to alter elements of the painting including a dramatic reworking of the landscape.
3.  Ibid. pp. 38-39.
4.  Ibid. p. 37.
5.  For reproductions of the first five frieze elements to be rediscovered see K. Christiansen op. cit.; the canvas in a Roman private collection was discovered subsequent to the publication of that article and was published by V. Sgarbi, Natura e Maniera tra Tiziano e Caravaggio: Le ceneri violette di Giorgione, Milan 2004, p. 23, reproduced p. 24.