Nativity

Attributed to Dossi Evangelista detto Dossazzo

(Ferrara, terzo decennio XVI secolo ? - Ferrara, 1586)

This Nativity on panel has an uncertain collecting and attribution history and has given rise to various hypotheses. It has been suggested that it once belonged to the collection of the Duchess of Urbino Lucrezia d’Este, and later, through the Aldobrandini family, that it passed into the Borghese collection. As for attribution, stylistic features would suggest the hand of Evangelista Dossi, known as Dossazzo, son of Battista and grandson of the more famous Dosso.

Object details

Commentary

The painting shows a Nativity scene in the foreground, with the Child depicted in the centre lying directly on the ground on a white sheet. Behind the Virgin, to the right of the scene, is a wooden hut and an ox seen from behind, while a series of turreted buildings appear in the background. In the upper part of the painting, a white cloud hosts a group of little angels.

The popularity of the subject, as well as the usual vagueness of inventory descriptions of this subject, make it difficult to reconstruct the collecting history of the Borghese panel. Della Pergola (1955, p. 16, no. 6) conjectured that it came from the collection of Lucrezia d’Este, whose inventory, dated 1592, lists many Nativity paintings variously attributed to the Dossi, Garofalo or an unknown author. Inherited by Pietro Aldobrandini at the end of the 16th century, the collection of paintings belonging to the Duchess of Urbino would later partially pass into the Borghese estate through Olimpia. Della Pergola identified the work in question in the inventory of 1790, described as Garofalo’s ‘Small Nativity’, an attribution that subsequently reappeared in the fideicommissary list of 1833 and was taken up by Piancastelli (1891, p. 130). However, other plausible inventory references are found both in the same inventory of 1790 (Madonna with Child and St. Joseph by Dossi) and in the previous inventory of 1693 (‘a painting of about two spans with the Nativity scene and Glory of Angels, No. 3 with a gilded frame by Scarsellino on a panel’ and a panel of the same subject and uncertain attribution), confirming the impossibility of arriving at a definitive reconstruction of the panel’s collection history (Inventory references have been noted by Lucantoni 2002, pp. 126-127, no. 5). If the work really came from Lucrezia d’Este’s collection, however, it would be more likely that it passed to the Borghese family not as part of the bequest of Olimpia Aldobrandini, who died in 1682, but with the Aldobrandini-Pamphilj succession after 1760.

The majority of critics have attributed the painting to Battista Luteri, known as Battista Dossi, brother of the more famous Dosso (Venturi 1893, p. 127; Della Pergola cit.; Gardner 1911, p. 234; Zwanziger 1911, pp. 80-81; Longhi 1928, p. 197; De Rinaldis 1948, p. 82; Romani 1994-1995, p. 354, no. 468), in some cases suggesting that the painting was produced under the guidance of the latter (Mezzetti 1965, no. 159) or in collaboration with him (Berenson 1936, p. 149). In the 1960s, Gibbons (1968, no. 174) surmised that it was a copy from Battista and put forward the name of his son Evangelista, known as ‘Dossazzo’, an attribution taken up by Lucantoni (cit.), who noted stylistic characteristics akin to Dossi’s but greater imprecision and inferior pictorial quality.

If we accept the attribution to Dossazzo or some imitator of Battista, the work can be dated to the mid-16th century

Pier Ludovico Puddu