The Faces of Wisdom
Dosso and Battista Dossi in the library of Bernardo Cles
Between the end of 1531 and the early months of 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 envisaged an imposing decoration.
On the walls he painted frescoes (most of which have been lost), while for the ceiling coffers he painted a series of eighteen paintings on spruce board depicting sages, philosophers and orators of antiquity.
A marvellous environment 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 in Villa Chigi, now Villa Farnesina.
The restored panels and images of the wise men, philosophers and sages, starting with ancient art, are the leitmotif of the exhibition at the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento entitled I volti della sapienza. Dosso e Battista Dossi nella Biblioteca di Bernardo Cles | The Faces of Wisdom. Dosso and Battista Dossi in the Library of Bernardo Cles, open from 30 June until 22 October 2023.
It's an incredible and 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 have affected these works.
In March 1813, after being removed from the ceiling of the Clesiana Library, the eighteen panels were taken to the Imperial Regio Ginnasio Liceo di Trento (today Liceo Prati) at the behest of the prefect of Altoadige, Filippo Dalfiume.
In 1922, Trentino's superintendent Giuseppe Gerola had them brought back to the castle but found only twelve, six were lost between 1813 and 1896. The restoration work, carried out by the restoration company Enrica Vinante, brought this magnificent pictorial cycle back to its former glory.
The exhibition, curated by Vincenzo Farinella and Laura Dal Prà, displays around one hundred works including sculptures, prints, books 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 works by Moretto, Salvator Rosa, Andrea Pozzo, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, Vincenzo Grandi, Albrecht Duerer and Josè de Ribera.
The panels are compared on the one hand with paintings with the same subject matter but executed 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 Trento, in order to focus on the issue of the collaboration of the two brothers.
Finally, also in ideal connection with the identity of the Dossos' Wise Men, the itinerary develops from a precious series of busts depicting philosophers and scientists of the ancient world to masterpieces of the late 16th and 17th centuries when images of the most illustrious wise men organised in true cycles would know great success.
Such fame gave rise to a truly fortunate iconographic genre, by enriching private collections and indulging the erudite culture of the patrons of the time.
