FEATURE image: Dosso Dossi (c. 1489–1542), Melissa, 1520s. 69.25 x 68.5 inches, Borghese Gallery, Rome.
Duccio Di Buoninsegna (c.1255-c.1319).
The artistic tradition of the Sienese master, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-c. 1319) was based on older Greek painting. Duccio, however, was no less “modern” than Giotto (1266-1377). Giotto, who was trained by Cimabue (1240-1302), directed his creative artistry towards concrete reality whose perception derived from the artist’s thoughts and feelings of it. Duccio would achieve a similar but unique synthesis through and from a different direction.
Duccio modernized the older Greek style creating the painting styles of the Sienese school as well as all of early Renaissance painting. Duccio’s artwork is distinguished by his discriminating advance of the Byzantine Post-Hellenism tradition in Tuscany—and following his own encounter with Cimabue who gave the Sienese artist his first important commission in Florence in 1285 —in a masterly delicate way. This delicacy and discrimination are seen in Duccio’s elegant, often light and airy, compositions and rich colors.
Over the next almost 25 years Duccio learned and deployed the elements of various pictorial traditions that, by his constant intelligent blending, enriched them. Duccio’s style used the iconographic schemata of the ancient Oriental-Byzantine tradition including its glorious color and poetic composition along with the ultra-contemporary French and Gothic linear style. Duccio’s oeuvre epitomizes the artist’s temperament and taste as well as a lifetime of artistic education and culture.
Beyond its representation of an event in a scene, Duccio’s painting, not unlike Giotto’s histories, is raised to another level by some of its formal elements –- a figure, episode, or gesture -– into the artist’s magical world. This quality of Duccio’s art provides a textually clear and comprehensibly observed episode—such as of the Gospels— within a setting that is carefully observed and delineated—and with its totality imbued in finer artistic and aesthetic sensibilities.
The imminent drama manifested in Duccio’s iconography transcends its representational anecdote, even as figures or episodes of the Bible are easily recognizable. His artwork’s plasticity, with figures and surroundings in serene harmony, emanates a power whose message supersedes, or at least is contiguous to, the painting’s ostensible, usually religious, subject matter.
In the display of such a unique artistic quality, Duccio’s artwork functions in a dream-like and imaginatively timeless dimension—a unique poetical language—while it conveys an historical condition in any of his intentionally-varying episodes. Duccio’s carefully delineated religious scenes, softly and carefully conveyed, would characterize emerging Sienese painting and make religious painting exceedingly popular in Europe over the next 450 years. see – Giotto and His Contemporaries, Enzo Carli, trans. Susan Bellamy, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1958.
Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1421-October 4, 1497).
Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) had a cult in Italy that grew around him quickly and continues to today. He was born with the name Ferdinand in the last decade of the 12th century in Lisbon, Portugal. His father was a high financial official in the king’s court and a knight under Alfonso II of Aragon. Young Ferdinand was educated at the cathedral school in Lisbon and, at 15 years old, became an Augustinian Canon regular in Lisbon. After two years he transferred to a house in Coimbra in part to get away from his well-to-do relatives who were constantly seeking after their promising progeny who had decided to become a Catholic religious and priest. At Coimbra Ferdinand studied at the monastery’s renown biblical studies school for eight years. Steeped in the scriptures he became a theological and scripture scholar of unparalleled high caliber. One day the young Augustinian canon was serving as guest master for the house in Coimbra when 5 Franciscans sent out from Assisi in Italy by St. Francis (1181-1226)– the order had been founded in 1209 – stopped on their way to the missions in in Morocco. Not soon after Anthony learned that all 5 of these zealous Franciscans were butchered in Morocco as martyrs as soon as they arrived there. Their bodies brought back to Coimbra for their funeral deeply moved Anthony who wanted to emulate these Franciscans’ active witness and he decided to become a Franciscan himself in order to take their place. His family, who had been wary of his becoming a scholarly Augustinian following a venerable old rule in nearby Coimbra, grew even more upset as their son who threw away a knight’s career at court now joined a fly by night ragtag group in far flung Italy founded by another rich kid named Francesco who also renounced wealth to focus on evangelical poverty following his brand-new skeletal rule based on a few bible verses. Ferdinand was determined in his inspirations and took the difficult path of leaving the Augustinian canons for the Franciscans and then insisting on leaving Portugal for the missions in Morocco. But Ferdinand’s ambitions were stymied – he fell ill and was ordered home. But the ship he was traveling on was caught in a storm that drove Anthony off course to Sicily. From there he took the long journey to Assisi where he met St. Francis and was present at the famous Chapter of Mats in 1221 that drew, perhaps symbolically, 5,000 brethren of the new order. Though highly educated among a group of mendicants whose founder was suspicious of book learning, Anthony disappeared into menial duties in a small hospice in Forli. But the Franciscans, many of them former sons of the wealthy themselves, recognized Anthony’s brilliant abilities and he was ordered to preach to the whole of Italy. Anthony of Padua became this great preacher and, later, famous worker of miracles. In a time of heresy and controversy throughout Christendom Anthony, who was gentle, poised, charming, intelligent, thoughtful, and deeply well-versed in theology and scripture, served as a personable and effective counterweight. From that point forward until his death, Anthony was active and always on the road from Italy’s south to the north of France. Townspeople and rural folk were positively responsive to his efforts and wherever Anthony went next, churches, plazas and surrounding countryside would be packed with people to hear his sermons. Speaking events would be advertised by word of mouth so that towns often declared a holiday in anticipation of his arrival so that everyone could go out to listen to Anthony. Anthony’s preeminent issue was on the corruption of the secular clergy which scandalized the church, the faithful in the pews, and the wider world to the detriment of the faith. During a time of the rise of cities and the bourgeoisie, as the hierarchical church progressively attached themselves to the bankers and such, Anthony inveighed against the society’s greed, its lust for elite luxuriant living, with its necessary exploitation of labor to maintain themselves at such an unfair level. Anthony called such social behavior “tyrannical.” At a synod in Bourges, France, in the presence of the bishop, Anthony called him out – “as for you with the mitre on your head” and proceeded to denounce his abuses in the diocese before a petrified and perhaps also thrilled audience. Anthony happened to be in Padua when he preached his last sermons – and thus his nomenclature. Miracles and stories have a Franciscan flavor -such as preaching to the fishes or a giant walnut tree unexpectedly providing sustenance and shade to a tired evangelizing preacher. After 10 years of constant travel and preaching, like the Franciscan founder who died blind and naked on the ground outside the Portiuncula in 1226 at 44 years old, Anthony’s body had worn out at an early age. He was 36 years old. In the spring of 1231, his health deteriorated, he took a period of rest and prayer in a small hermitage in Camposampiero close to Padua. His health did not recover and he asked to return to St. Mary’s in Padua. As he was transported to the city in an ox cart he got as far Arcella, just opposite the city, where he died in a convent of Poor Clares. Though his cult hails him as a miracle worker — at his canonization 56 were recorded -– only one occurred in Anthony’s lifetime. Anthony‘s reputation, who was called the “hammer of the heretics” by his contemporaries, rests mainly on his persuasive preaching filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) canonized Anthony less than a year after his death – faster than St. Francis himself – as this once rich kid with excellent theological and biblical training became the patron saint of losing things and the illiterate. On January 16, 1946, Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) declared Anthony a doctor of the church. In art, the saint’s iconography often depicts him with one or more of the following: a book, a heart, a flame, a lily, or the child Jesus. see – https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5118/anthony_of_padua – retrieved June 13, 2025. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Coulson, Guild Press, New York, 1957, pp.73-76.
Dosso Dossi (c. 1489-1542).
Dosso Dossi (c. 1489-1542)– whose actual name was Giovanni de Lutero–was an Italian Renaissance painter who belonged to the School of Ferrara. Among scores of artists who painted mainly in the Venetian style influenced by Giorgione (c. 1477-1510), Dosso Dossi dominated the school that maintained its tradition of painterly artificiality.
Melissa is Dosso Dossi’s masterpiece: a benign personage in the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516) of Ludovico Ariosto (1574-1533). The enchantress frees humans from the black arts of the wicked sorceress Alcina. The painting depicts Melissa at the moment she burns the seals and spells of Alcina and liberates two men from the tree trunks.
The realistic dog is certainly a human being under Alcina’s spell who will be liberated by Melissa and take up again the suit of armor he watches earnestly. The trees are stylized, artificially-lighted elements – that is, Giorgionesque – that provide a magical setting for the poem’s characters.
The figure of Melissa is draped in a fringed red-and-gold-brocaded robe and enriched by Titianesque glazes. She is particularly alluring in a sparkling gold and green setting moored by meticulously and softly portrayed meadows, background figures, and distant city towers.
SOURCE: History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Third Edition, Frederick Hartt, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1987.
A Dictionary of Art and Artists, Peter and Linda Murray, Penguin Books; Revised,1998.
Italian Paintings of the Sixteenth Century, Allan Braham, The National Gallery, London (William Collins), 1985.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770).
Tiepolo depicts Mary with proud, almost sculptural, beauty of a human being free from original sin from the moment of her conception. Mary stands as a fully mature woman who is triumphant over the tempter, the serpent, that slithers and writhes itself across the globe. Mary is surrounded by cherubim with her halo pictured as a circle of stars, usually 12 in number, though some here are implicitly hidden from view. In chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12: 1) stands against the Dragon who is about “to devour her child when she gave birth” (Rev. 12: 4). That Biblical woman has been identified with Mary, particularly as The Immaculate Conception. The dove that hovers above her in the painting represents the Holy Spirit who emanates from the Father and the Son and rests on Mary fundamentally at her Annunciation (Luke 1) which leads to the birth of Jesus and at Pentecost (Acts 2) which is the birth of the Christian Church. Augmented by roses and lilies, Mary is clothed in her traditional symbolic colors representing her virginal purity (white) as she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit, her role as the sinless human Mother of God (red), her character of fidelity, truth and spiritual serenity (blue), and the glory of her birth as The Immaculate Conception and crowning as Queen of Heaven following her Assumption (gold). Though its dogma was not settled definitively until 1854 by Pope Pius IX (reign, 1846-1878), The Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8th) was on the Church calendar as early as 1708 and a popular subject for Catholic Church art throughout the 18th century.
Tiepolo was invited to Madrid in 1762 by Charles III (1716-1788). The artist was accompanied to Spain by his sons, Domenico and Lorenzo, and immediately began the frescoes in the Royal Palace that he finished in 1766. His next commission was for altar paintings, seven in number, for the new Franciscan Convent of San Pascual in Aranjuez, a Royal seat, including The Immaculate Conception. As soon as the series of paintings were finished in 1769, they were considered passé as Tiepolo’s late Baroque Rococo style had given way to the rise of neo-classicism as the next new thing that took hold of Carlos III, Europe and beyond to the United States into the first quarter of the 19th century. Tiepolo, who died in 1770, wasn’t around to see his church paintings fragmented and stored away and replaced by neo-classical artwork of the same subjects by another artist. However, The Immaculate Conception survived intact as King Carlos III ‘s confessor, the powerful Franciscan bishop Joaquín de Eleta (1707-1788) who, holding sway over artistic commissions, favored depictions of The Immaculate Conception as one of his important subjects that shaped late 18th century Spain’s visual culture. Tiepolo’s emotional and elegant version, which he signed, was conserved as a masterful contrast to neo-classicism’s colder rationality. The painting has been in the Prado since 1828 – Mary not content with being relegated to a storage closet – while a preparatory drawing that exists for the artwork made its way into the picture collection of the Lords Kinnaird in London. See- A Basic Guide to The Prado, J. Rogelio Buendia, translated by Patricia S. Parrent, Silex, 1973, pp. 240-241.
Guercino (1591-1666).
