These large and magnificent canvases once formed part of one of the most important, influential and famous interiors of the Italian Renaissance. They were painted in about 1520-1521 by Dosso Dossi, the preeminent artistic figure of the Ferrarese Renaissance, as part of the artist’s famed Aeneas Frieze, a series of ten works illustrating scenes from Virgil’s Aeneid, which was an epic poem that recounted the story of the Trojan prince Aeneas and his journey to Italy after the destruction of Troy. Dosso painted this frieze for Duke Alfonso I d’Este (1476-1534) to be hung above large mythological masterpieces by Titian and Bellini in his opulent camerino d’alabastro in Ferrara. Notable for their vibrant colors, charming eccentricities, and highly original compositions, these canvases fully encapsulate Dosso Dossi’s distinct artistic vision and unmistakable style.
The Camerino d’Alabastro
Many Renaissance princes and rulers designed small, intimate studies as private sanctuaries from their public lives. Known as studioli, these lavishly decorated rooms were planned to the liking of their owners, reflecting their personal passions while also highlighting their intellect and cultural eminence. One of the most renowned was Alfonso I d’Este’s studiolo, known by him as il nostro camerino, or “our little room”, but by more modern audiences as the camerino d’alabastro for its famed marble decorations.1 Alfonso’s camerino was situated at the heart of his private ducal apartments on the Via Coperta, a raised bridge-like structure which linked the Castello Estense to the Palazzo Ducale in Ferrara (fig. 1). Unlike his sister Isabelle d’Este who looked towards allegorical and moralizing subjects for her studiolo, Alfonso instead chose works inspired by ancient texts whose themes ranged from the hunt to leisurely pleasures, possibly emulating an idealized escape from the confines of the city.2 Even though this room served as his inner sanctum, guests were undoubtedly invited to admire its sumptuous quality and undeniable beauty.
The immense project of designing and executing Alfonso’s camerino took over a decade to complete, but the finished product was truly one of great marvel. Under a gilded ceiling and against beautiful alabaster walls could be found sculptural and painted examples from some of the most famous artists of the period. Having failed to obtain paintings from Michelangelo, Raphael, and Fra Bartolommeo, Alfonso secured Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, completed in 1514 and today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (fig. 2).3 Between 1518 and 1525 the Duke commissioned three canvases from Bellini’s virtuosic pupil, Titian, to also grace the walls of his camerino, which included his Bacchus and Ariadne today in the National Gallery, London (fig. 3),4 as well as his Bacchanal of the Andrians5 and his Worship of Venus,6 both now in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. One large painting of The Bacchanal of Vulcan by Dosso Dossi, though now lost, once joined these four large canvases on the main walls of the camerino. Dosso’s exquisite ten-piece frieze, which included the present pair of canvases, encircled the room high above these large works, certainly captivating audiences below with their colors, lively brushwork, and immersive subjects.
Alfonso d’Este’s entire camerino descended intact through two subsequent generations of the Este family. When the duke’s grandson, Alfonso II d’Este (1533-1597) died without a direct heir, 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, the Pope reserving the camerino as his own. When the two returned to Rome about six months later, they took with them most of the room’s contents, including the large canvases by Titian and Bellini. About a decade later, Scipione Borghese turned to the Castello d’Este to supplement his decorations for the Villa Borghese, using his position as nephew to Pope Paul V to claim works from Ferrara, including Dosso Dossi’s Aeneas Frieze, which had eluded Aldobrandini’s acquisitive eye and still remained in the camerino d’alabastro. Newly rediscovered documents confirm that all ten painting’s from Dosso’s frieze remained together until at least the second half of the nineteenth century, having been brought to Spain by José de Madrazo soon after they left the Borghese collection.7
Dosso Dossi’s Aeneas Frieze
Virgil wrote his masterpiece, the Aeneid, between 29-19 BC. The epic poem, which was divided into twelve books, recounted the legend of Aeneas—the Trojan prince who would become the ancestor of the Roman people. The first six books were centered around Aeneas’ arduous journey to Italy after Troy fell to the Greeks, as well as all the events that occurred along the way; the second six books focused on the battles that ensued after Aeneas’ arrival to Italy. It was only the first half of the poem, however, that served as inspiration for Dosso’s Aeneas Frieze, with close attention paid to Books III and V for the present pair of canvases. In these two canvases, as in all of the works from in the frieze, Dosso does not provide a literal visual synopsis of Aeneas’ travels. Rather, he extracts specific episodes from different points in the poem, conflating time as he combines various vignettes in his own unique manner. In doing so, he created engaging and sometimes humorous scenes that undoubtedly would have appealed to the tastes of his ducal patron and the cosmopolitan Ferrarese court.
Dosso looked to Book III of the Aeneid for the somewhat haunting scene captured in the first of the two canvases, The Plague of Pergamea. In search of land to build a new Troy, Aeneas leads his people to Pergamea on the island of Crete, which they believed to be the land of their forefathers. As they begin to construct their new home, the Trojans were afflicted with a terrible plague that swept through the city, which they would soon abandon and continue on their sojourn through the Mediterranean. Across the foreground, and in front of a lush forest and the ruins of a temple, unfolds an array of figures sleeping, weeping, or looking for the dead and the sick. At the far left of the canvas appears a curious scene of one exotic figure and two men on horseback, possibly a reference to Aeneas and Achates’ encounter outside the temple of Apollo with King Anius of Delos, prior to their departure for Crete. In the right background may appear the Trojan people already busying themselves with marriage in their new home, though it also could be another reference to the young man on horseback in the Sicilian games.
The second canvas, which includes elements found in Book V of the Aeneid, more explicitly represents the The Sicilian Games. At the far left, a large crowd of all ages has gathered to watch a series of games organized by Aeneas to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his father’s death after a storm led his Trojan fleet to Sicily. In front of this crowd stands a confident Dares with his hands on the golden horns of the prized bull, beckoning a challenger to a boxing match, though he would soon be defeated by the elderly Entellus. Near the center is an archery contest around the firmly anchored wooden mast of a ship. Not visible, however, is the dove that would have been tethered to the very top of the mast as the target for the competition. Beyond this contest appears a swirling group of boys on horseback, boldly demonstrating their technique and battle skills to their Trojan fathers, while the angry Juno appears in her peacock-driven carriage in the upper right corner of the sky. She commands Iris to persuade the Trojan women to set fire to the Trojan fleet, so as to prevent further battles and arduous journeys. The women stand on the shore having set fire to the ships, a scene cleverly captured by Dosso, who bathes the smoky shore with a misty, almost impressionistic atmosphere. The fires would soon be quenched, however, by a torrential storm sent by Jupiter at the behest of Aeneas. Finally, in the lower right corner, appears Aeneas, kneeling on the ground as he ploughs the trench that will mark the boundaries of the future city to be inhabited by the Trojan people.
In both of these canvases, the influences of Giorgione and Raphael on the younger Ferrarese artist are clear. Like the Venetian Giorgione, Dosso focused on the overall pictorial impact, abandoning preparatory draughtsmanship in favor of designing his scenes straight onto the canvas with a distinct and almost feathery brush. The changes he made sometimes appear as pentimenti most fully revealed through x-ray imaging, and the present pair of canvases are no exception. X-rays show that Dosso had initially conceived of the crowd in the Sicilian Games as gathering under pavilions draped in fabric, and Aeneas was originally standing in the lower right, pushing a plough behind a smaller bull.8 In the Plague at Pergamea, on the other hand, a series of bushes once stood in the place of the tents near the center.9 In this painting, what is also clearly visible is the influence of Raphael, whose drawing of The Plague at Pergamea, which was reproduced and known by way of an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (fig. 4), served as a clear visual predecessor of Dosso’s composition.
Rediscovery and Reconstruction:
In 2010, Berzaghi republished the 1856 catalogue of the collection of José de Madrazo (1781-1859), a neoclassical painter and director of the Prado Museum, who acquired all ten of Dosso’s canvases in Rome between 1803-1819, subsequently bringing them all back with him to Madrid.10 The republication of this very detailed catalogue sheds important light on the entire series, which had in the centuries prior been discussed in various inventories in only the most cursory manner.11 Madrazo’s catalogue provided a more comprehensive description of the scenes in each of the ten canvases, and clarified each canvas’s dimensions—information that has proven immensely helpful for more recent proposed reconstructions of the original camerino.12 Having a clearer understanding of the size of each canvas, for example, with six of slightly larger widths than the other four, has lent further support to the idea that Dosso’s canvases would probably have been hung very close together, with the six canvases of wider dimensions on the two long walls and the four of slightly narrower dimensions on the shorter walls.13
Dosso’s frieze was dispersed at some point after the death of Madrazo, with all ten of the paintings largely disappearing from the public eye. Seven of the ten are known today. The first two canvases to reemerge on the market in recent history appeared in London in 1964: Aeneas at the Entrance to the Elysian Fields (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)14 and the Trojans Preparing a Feast and the Running at the Sicilian Games (Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham).15 The discovery of these two works led to the recognition of a canvas today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington as a fragment from the same frieze (fig. 5);16 very recently, the other half of this fragment has been discovered in a private collection.17 Together, the two fragments originally illustrated The Trojans at Acesta.18 The present canvases reappeared in 1999. Since the time of their rediscovery, two others from the series have surfaced, both published in color in Peter Humfrey’s recent essay, including one of Hades in a private collection in Rome,19 and another of The Trojans in the Strophades and Chaonia, recently acquired in Spain by the Prado Museum in Madrid.20 From the 1856 Madrazo catalogue, we know that the three missing canvases probably illustrate the following scenes: Neptune calming the storm raised by Aeolus. From Book I (56 by 167 cm); Aeneas and his family escaping the burning of Troy. From Book II (56 by 164 cm); and Aeneas meeting Tityos in the Underworld. From Book VI (56 by 183 cm).21
1. Christiansen 2000, p. 36.
2. Christiansen 2000, p. 37.
3. Inv. no. 1942.91, oil on canvas, 170.2 by 188 cm. 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.
4. Inv. no. NG. 35, oil on canvas, 176.5 by 191 cm.
5. Inv. no. P000418, oil on canvas, 175 by 193 cm.
6. Inv. no. P000419, oil on canvas, 172 by 175 cm.
7. See Berzaghi 2010 and Humfrey 2020.
8. Christiansen 2000, p. 40, reproduced figs. 5 and 6.
9. Christiansen 2000, p. 42, reproduced fig. 9.
10. Berzaghi 2010, passim.
11. The present two canvases, for example, were very likely numbers 74 and 76 in his catalogue. See Berzaghi p. 135.
12. For the most recent discussion of this matter and the proposed reconstruction, see Humfrey 2020, passim.
13. See Humfrey 2020, p. 151, fig. 17.
14. Inv. no. 14666, oil on canvas, 58.4 by 167.8 cm. Humfrey 2020, p. 138, reproduced fig. 2.
15. Inv. no. 64.5, oil on canvas, 58.5 by 167.5 cm. Humfrey 2020, p. 138, reproduced fig. 1.
16. Inv. no. 1939.1.250, oil on canvas, 58.7 by 87.6 cm. Humfrey 2020, p. 139, reproduced fig. 3.
17. See Humfrey 2020, pp. 141-142, reproduced fig. 8.
18. The proposed construction of the original canvas, reuniting the two fragments, is published in Humfrey 2020, p. 143, fig. 9.
19. This canvas was first reproduced in black and white, although not discussed, in V. Sgarbe, “Le manière padane,” in Natura e maniera. Le ceneri violette di Giorgione tra Tiziano e Caravaggio, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2004, pp. 23-24. Reproduced in color and more recently discussed in Humfrey 2020, p. 138-142, reproduced figs. 6 and 15 (detail).
20. Humfrey 2020, p. 141, reproduced.
21. Humfrey 2020, p. 143. With the republication of this catalogue, what also becomes clear is that the fragment by Dosso Dossi sold at Sotheby’s New York on 30 January 2014 was not part of the Aeneas Frieze, but rather formed part of another series of paintings that Dosso painted for Duke Alfonso d’Este’s bedroom.