Lattanzio Gambara (ca. 1530-1574) - Brescia and Parma

Lattanzio Gambara
Wedding of Pirithöus and Hippodamia
ca. 1560
fresco transferred to canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Lattanzio Gambara
Wedding of Pirithöus and Hippodamia
ca. 1560
fresco transferred to canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Lattanzio Gambara
Wedding of Pirithöus and Hippodamia
ca. 1560
fresco transferred to canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Lattanzio Gambara
Ceres
ca. 1555-60
fresco
Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia

Lattanzio Gambara
Agrippine Sybil
ca. 1555-60
fresco transferred to canvas
Glasgow Museums

"In Brescia the veristic tendency that had so strongly marked its painting in the second quarter of the Cinquecento yielded, after Romanino and Moretto had died, to a more urbane fashion.  Lattanzio Gambara, Romanino's collaborator and son-in-law, the chief painter of the later Brescian school, had brought to Romanino when he joined him about 1550 the Emilian inclinations of a painter trained until then in the Cremonese school; his master apparently had been Giulio Campi.  During the decade when Gambara worked for the ageing Romanino he acceded only partly to the latter's lead of style, asserting his Mannerist affiliations instead.  Indeed, Gambara seems to have helped to incline the older painter towards the Romanism he exhibited in his latest years.  Gambara's Maniera in his secular fresco decorations of the later fifties and early sixties is often spirited and occasionally even inventive.  But a counter-effect on Gambara of the Brescian environment slowed his Maniera impetus: compromising between Brescian tradition and Maniera, his style turned after a while into a classicist academicism, laboured, turgid, and correct.  His last work was not in Brescia but in Parma, where he shared the task of decoration of the nave arcade of the cathedral (at intervals between 1567 and 1573) with the Cremonese Sojaro [Bernardino Gatti].  Desiring not only the correctness of an academic style but its pretence to the grand manner also, he sought accessible examples from which to borrow it in Giulio Romano and Pordenone."

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Lattanzio Gambara
Christ Ascending to Heaven
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
British Museum

Lattanzio Gambara
Three Apostles witnessing the Ascension
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
British Museum

Lattanzio Gambara
Five Apostles witnessing the Ascension
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
British Museum

Lattanzio Gambara
Standing Warrior
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1571-73
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Lattanzio Gambara
Two Prophets seated on Clouds
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Lattanzio Gambara
Figure climbing onto a Cloud
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Lattanzio Gambara
Study for a Prophet
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Lattanzio Gambara
Massacre of the Innocents
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Lattanzio Gambara
St Roch interceding with Christ on behalf of Plague Victims
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Lattanzio Gambara
Plague Victims beseeching Christ, the Virgin and St Roch
(study for fresco, Parma Cathedral)
ca. 1567-73
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Battista Luteri, called Battista Dossi (ca. 1490-1548) - Ferrara

Battista Dossi
Venus and Cupids
ca. 1530
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Battista Dossi
Portrait of Alfonso I d'Este
ca. 1530
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

Battista Dossi
Noli me tangere
ca. 1520
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum

Battista Dossi
Holy Family with St John the Baptist and an Angel
ca. 1530-40
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

"Despite the personal episodes that continued to distinguish Dosso Dossi's painting of the fourth decade, his art, even more than is in general the case, receded then from its creative, innovative level of the 1520s.  It may not only have been the need of productive economy that caused Dosso to concede a continuously more important role to his brother Battista; as Dosso's public manner became increasingly classicist, conventional, and impersonal, it mattered less whether his ideas were presented by his private hand.  We have observed that Battista, who was several years Dosso's junior, had been for some time in relation with the Raphael shop in Rome, and was thus, far more than Dosso, disposed to classicist conventions.  We have an even less sure knowledge of Battista's early activity than we have of Dosso's, but the small pictures by Battista which we may assign to the 1520s are effectively enough Romanized to indicate that some effort has been required to adjust them to the models of his older brother's style.  Like Dosso, Battista painted cabinet pictures in abundance; and it may be that in the thirties most of the more usual subjects for small pictures (such as the Holy Family with St John the Baptist, Rome, Borghese) were painted by Battista.  . . .  His quality of hand, compared with Dosso's, was undistinguished, but even so it was more than his quality of mind.  What there was of classicist vacancy in the late designs that Dosso conceived (e.g. St Michael, Dresden, Gallery, documented 1540) is increased by Battista's inability to apprehend forms in a large-scale unity."

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Battista Dossi
St Michael subduing Satan
1540
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Battista Dossi
St George and the Dragon
1540
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Battista Dossi
Allegorical Figure of Dawn
1544
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Battista Dossi
Allegorical Figure of Justice
1544
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Battista Dossi
Holy Family with St John the Baptist
ca. 1535-40
oil on panel
Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice

Battista Dossi
Holy Family with Shepherd
ca. 1520-25
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art (Ohio)

Battista Dossi
Holy Family
before 1548
oil on panel
private collection

Battista Dossi
Venus and Cupid
ca. 1540
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Battista Dossi
Nymph of Spring
before 1548
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Battista Dossi
Hunt of the Calydonian Boar
before 1548
oil on panel
El Paso Museum of Art (Texas)

Brother Artists Dosso and Battista Dossi - Frescoes in Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ceiling Roundel with Putti
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Putti playing with Letters of the Name of Bishop Bernardo Clesio
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Putti playing with Heraldic Lions from the Arms of Bishop Bernardo Clesio
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

"In 1531-32- Dosso was engaged, again with his brother, on an extensive fresco decoration for Bishop Clesio in the Castel Buonconsiglio at Trento (where Romanino of Brescia was called to work at the same time); Dosso's paintings there show an alteration from their former style that is markedly towards the style of Giulio [Romano].  In the Buonconsiglio frescoes and in the major easel works that closely succeed them the libertarian attitudes towards form and expression that had characterized so much of Dosso's art before are chastened: drawing becomes firm and sharp and contests the assertiveness of colour; surfaces take on a harder brilliance; fantasy and free invention yield to a new desire for classicist correctness."

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ceres
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ornamental Putti
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Neptune
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Athena
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Pluto with Cerberus
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Juno
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Mercury
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ornamental Putti
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ornamental Putti
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ornamental Putti
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Dosso and Battista Dossi
Ornamental Putti
1531-32
fresco
Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento

Giovanni Luteri, called Dosso Dossi (ca. 1486-1542) - Ferrara

Dosso Dossi
Sorceress Circe
ca. 1507
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Dosso Dossi
Sorceress Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape
ca. 1514-16
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Dosso Dossi
Holy Family with St John the Baptist, a Cat and Donors
1512-13
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Dosso Dossi
Lamentation
ca. 1517
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Dosso Dossi
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1518-20
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

"Born Giovanni Luteri, the son of a fattore of the Este court, Dosso was probably a contemporary of Titian and seems to have been close in age to Correggio among the Emilians.  . . .  By 1514 Dosso was employed in Ferrara, the main centre of his practice for his entire life.  A determining immersion in the modern Venetian style  must have been contemporary at least with Giorgione's lifetime.  . . .  But Dosso's response was not only to Giorgione directly but also, and it seems more specifically, to the young Titian's libertarian interpretation of Giorgione.  . . .  It was from Titian, too, more than from Giorgione, that Dosso took courage to accentuate intensity of colour.  And it is even more evident than in Titian's pictures of the first decade that Dosso's early works do not respond to the principles of order that belong to Giorgione's classicism of style.  Dosso's learning in Venice had been of the visual and thematic aspects of that modern style, but not of the intellectual aspects of its aesthetic.  He took its liberty but not its discipline, either of modes of representation or of structure.  Despite his foundations in Giorgionismo, Dosso thus in effect by-passed classicism, and in the milieu in which he worked, at once archaizing and sophisticated, he used the liberties acquired from the Venetian mode to make an art of poetically expressive eccentricity."

– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)

Dosso Dossi after Titian
Bacchus
ca. 1524
oil on canvas
private collection

Dosso Dossi
Allegory with Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue
1524
oil on canvas
Wawel Castle, Cracow, Poland

Dosso Dossi
Apollo
1524
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Dosso Dossi
Stoning of Stephen
ca. 1525
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Dosso Dossi
Virgin and Child
ca. 1525
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Dosso Dossi
Virgin in Glory, with St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist
ca. 1520-30
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Dosso Dossi
St Sebastian
ca. 1526-27
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Dosso Dossi
Allegory of Fortune
ca. 1530
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Dosso Dossi
Hercules and Omphale (Allegory of Witchcraft)
ca. 1535
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Dosso Dossi
St John the Baptist
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Dosso Dossi
St Cosmas and St Damian
ca. 1534-42
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome