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) |