Saturday, August 31, 2019

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)