Day 388 - Dosso Dossi


 December 7, 2024

Gallery 611 takes as its theme court painters in Italy. This seems a bit silly to me because so many painters had court patronage at some point in their careers. This said, the rubric provides a rationale for grouping together works by late 15th century and early 16th century artists working in Ferrara and Milan.  

All but two of the works have religious themes. One of the exceptions is a small portrait of a scion of the Este clan. The second is today's work, an oil on canvas measuring about 44 inches high and 28 inches wide, by Dosso Dossi, a Ferrara painter whose dates are ca. 1486-1541-2.

It's entitled "The Three Ages of Humans" (although I suspect that before the Met became so politically correct in its labeling, it was called "The Three Ages of Man"), and I think I'm drawn to it precisely because its subject is decidedly non-religious.  The painting shows a wonderfully lush bower in the middle of which a couple is embracing; our eye is drawn to the woman's red and white striped skirt.  I think this may be the first depiction of an erotic connection I've seen that doesn't involve Venus and Mars, Venus and Adonis, or other characters out of Greco-Roman mythology. Spying mischievously on the couple from behind a boulder are two young children, while in the background an elderly couple appears.  The wall sign describes the children as "boys" and the older figures as "men," but I find it hard to tell, and I'd rather think of the children as a boy and a girl and the older couple as a man and a woman. 

The sign slo notes that the figures of the oldest couple were added later. This makes me wonder whether the painting, so playful and sensual, was initially intended to hang in a bedroom. I hope so. 

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