Trento, an exhibition dedicated to the Dossi brothers at the Buonconsiglio Castle

Between late 1531 and early 1532 Dosso Dossi, with the help of his brother Battista, was busy decorating the library of Prince-Bishop Bernardo Cles in the Magno Palazzo of the Buonconsiglio Castle in Trento. For the room that was to house the Trentino cardinal’s precious and rich collection of ancient books, Dosso thought of an impressive decoration. On the walls he created frescoes (mostly lost) while for the ceiling coffers he painted a series of eighteen paintings on spruce board depicting sages, philosophers and orators of antiquity. A marvelous setting that Mattioli, a court physician, compares in the poem he published in 1539 on the Magno Palazzo, to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Loggia of Psyche at Villa Chigi, now Villa Farnesina.

It will be precisely the restored panels and images of the wise men, philosophers and sages, starting with ancient art, that will be the leitmotif of the exhibition at the Buonconsiglio Castle entitled The Faces of Wisdom. Dosso and Battista Dossi in the Library of Bernardo Cles visitable until October 22, 2023. It will be an extraordinary opportunity to see them up close for the first time thanks to their dismantling and restoration and to learn about the many vicissitudes that affected these works. In March 1813, the eighteen panels, after being removed from the ceiling of the Clesiana Libraria, were brought, at the behest of the prefect ofAlto Adige Filippo Dalfiume, to theImperial Regio Ginnasio Liceo di Trento (today the Liceo Prati). In 1922, Superintendent Giuseppe Gerola had them brought back to the castle but found only twelve; six were lost between 1813 and 1896. Restoration completed in May brought this magnificent pictorial cycle to its former glory conducted by restoration firm Enrica Vinante.

The exhibition, curated by Vincenzo Farinella and Laura Dal Prà, will see on display a hundred works including sculptures, prints, volumes and paintings such as the famous painting depicting Heraclitus and Democritus by Donato Bramante from the Brera Art Gallery, the marble busts of Homer and Cicero on loan from the Capitoline Museums in Rome and the Uffizi, the two magnificent canvases by Dosso from the Canadian museum Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the American Chrysler Museum, and more works by Moretto, Salvator Rosa, Andrea Pozzo, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, Vincenzo Grandi, Albrecht Duerer and Josè de Ribera.

The panels will then be compared on the one hand with paintings having the same subject but made by other painters, and on the other hand with works by Dosso Dossi and Battista executed shortly before or shortly after their years of activity in Trent this in order to focus on the issue of the collaboration of the two brothers. Finally, also in ideal connection with the identity of the Dossian Sapienti, the itinerary will develop from a precious series of busts depicting philosophers and scientists of the ancient world to then include masterpieces of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the images of the most illustrious sapienti organized in real cycles will know a great success. Fame that would give rise to a truly successful iconographic genre, enriching private collections and collections and pandering to the erudite culture of the patrons of the time.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Buonconsiglio Castle.

Trento, an exhibition dedicated to the Dossi brothers at the Buonconsiglio Castle

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