The exhibition recounts the artistic events of the early sixteenth century in Ferrara, from the years of the handover from Duke Ercole I d’Este to his son Alfonso I (1505), until the death of the latter (1534), a refined and ambitious patron, capable of renovating the private spaces of the court as well as the public spaces of the city.
The decline of the generation of Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti placed Ferrara before the difficult challenge of a high-level artistic change. At the beginning of the new century a new school developed, more open to exchanges with other centers, which had four masters as its protagonists: Ludovico Mazzolino, a painter with a bizarre flair who oriented his language in an anti-classical direction; Giovanni Battista Benvenuti known as Ortolano, always characterized by a convinced and sincere naturalism; Benvenuto Tisi, known as Garofalo, the main local interpreter of Raphael’s manner, and Giovanni Luteri, known as Dosso, who developed an original, cultured and amused style, influenced by Giorgione and Titian as much as by Michelangelo’s Rome.
The exhibition will accompany the visitor through an incredibly rich season, where the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane, history and fairy tale blend together in a figurative world that can be defined, in a word, as Ferrarese.
The Pilotta Complex is participating in the exhibition with the loan of the painting by Dosso Dossi , Madonna and Child, known as the Zingarella, ca. 1513.
Find out more about the painting
For the occasion, the climaframe of the work has been redone, allowing for better protection of the painting during its movements and exhibition.
For the entire duration of the exhibition, in place of Dosso’s painting at the Galleria Nazionale della Pilotta, the following work will be temporarily exhibited:
Scarsella Ippolito Detto Scarsellino (Ferrara 1550 ca./ 1620)
Madonna with Child, Saint Joseph and an Angel called Madonna della pappa, 1590-1600 ca. oil on panel, inv, 374
