According to Dosso Dossi Jupiter’s painting lies between Odilon Redon and Damien Hirst

 

Among the paintings by Niccolò Luteri, alias Dosso Dossi, that will be exhibited at the Castello del Buon Consiglio in Trento in occasion of the great show dedicated to the artist (from 12 July to 2 November) the visitor will find the renown “Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue”, a picture of an extraordinary contemporary appeal.

 

According to art historians (Berenson, 1907; Chastel, 1984; Biasini, 1995; Farinella 2007) this canvas – confiscated by the Nazi from Count Lanckoronski’s family in 1939 and now preserved at the Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow – represents Mercury asking a female figure, probably Iris – Juno’s messenger and goddess of Eloquence – to keep quite while Jupiter is painting butterflies.

 

At the time the artist is supposed to have conceived this image, he was already famous among the main Italian courts, having worked for the Gonzaga in Mantova, for Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara, and for the Della Rovere family in Pesaro. According to Giorgia Biasini (1995), the painting was commissioned to Dosso by Alfonso d’Este, to whom the Jupiter painted by the artist resembles, and whose favorite device was a flaming bomb known as “granata svampante” similar to the one painted at Jupiter’s feet representing the Duke’s interest in artillery production.

 

With such an artist, and considering the sophisticated cultural scene he was part of, the possible historical interpretations of this image are more than one, all of them starting from what Jupiter, Mercury, and the gentle plump woman at the right side of the canvas stand for according to the classical mythology – Iris or the personification of Virtue? But once all the possibilities have been verified one should turn to what Jupiter is painting and how he is doing it: one adult butterfly and possibly two moths on a blue sky. The three elements – painted by the kings of Gods himself with a surprising photographic approach – prefigure images later conceived by artists such as Odilon Redon, but also Damien Hirst, Rinko Kawauchi, or Ryan McGinley for example. Jupiter – or Dosso Dossi – is painting as if he were a symbolist living during the end of the 19th century, a chinese old master or indeed an artist aware of the conceptual side over the found object revealed by Marcel Duchamp.

 

November 17, 2022