Dosso Dossi Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara

An idiosyncratic, brilliant painter in sixteenth-century Ferrara, one of the most famous of Renaissance courts, Dosso Dossi was among the first artists to improvise on canvas. His rich color schemes and enigmatic painted world are imbued with mystery and transformation, energy and invention. This illuminating catalogue accompanied an exhibition of Dossi’s work held at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Ferrara, Italy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

For the exhibition almost all of Dossi’s surviving paintings were brought together, and each one receives a fresh and comprehensive scholarly discussion here. In addition, the catalogue contains essays that describe Dossi’s career and that probe the visual poetry and subtle wit of his work. Extensive technical examinations of the paintings are discussed and illustrated in additional essays. The book includes a full review of the scholarly literature, color reproductions of the paintings, many comparative illustrations, a chronology, and a complete bibliography.

[This book was originally published in 1999 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]