The 16th century Italian painter Dosso Dossi (1486?-1542) isn't a big name in America, unlike his contemporaries Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo. In fact, the show of his work that has just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City--it was shown late last year in his home city of Ferrara, and will go to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in April--is the first retrospective he has ever had. It comes on the 400th anniversary of the dispersal of most of his work, which was taken from Ferrara by papal edict and split up among various collectors, most of them Roman. His output has never been seen whole since. A team of scholars, headed by curators Peter Humfrey and Mauro Lucco, has done an impressive job of reassembling what remains of it. Dosso emerges from this show as an idiosyncratic, uneven court artist--not remotely an equal to Titian, but stronger and more complex than he'd seemed.
Practically nothing is known of Dosso's life, except for a few dates and contracts. But it was protected: he spent almost all of it working for two rulers of Ferrara, first for Alfonso I d'Este and then, after Alfonso's death in 1534, for his son Ercole II. Dosso was not, of course, painting for a wide public. At the court in Ferrara his audience consisted of the duke and his entourage, including whatever humanists, poets and assorted hangers-on happened to be on the payroll. All courts tend to be self-referential and mannered, and that of Alfonso I d'Este was no exception. The duke was considered fairly eccentric. He had a passion for do-it-yourself projects: in his own workshop he made tables, chessmen and elaborate boxes; he created ambitious ceramics as well, and even artillery.
By those in the court, some of Dosso's images must have been read as comments on the duke's relaxations. Jupiter, Mercury, and Virtue, circa 1523-24, is Dosso's praise of painting. He translates it to Parnassus, where the god Jupiter sits before a canvas, his administrative thunderbolt laid aside at his feet. Jupiter is painting butterflies--a divine hobbyist. On the right is a figure of Virtue, who has come to complain about the indignities she has had to suffer in the world below. Between them sits Mercury, a finger to his lips, telling her, in effect, to shut up and back off: Jupiter is too busy painting to worry, for the time being, about moral issues.
Dosso's job was hardly simple. A 16th century court painter was expected to turn out anything and everything, from ceremonial portraits to painted coach panels, from large allegorical paintings to banners for tourneys, costumes for masques, sets for the theater (which Alfonso delighted in) and perhaps the occasional crucifix or emblem of chastity for the ducal mistress's bedroom. Dosso had to second-guess the veering tastes of his boss--flatter him, keep him interested. And then there were the courtiers to deal with.