Isabella d’Este knew a thing or two about bad luck. A philandering husband who was out of town most of the time, the loss of three children, and oh yeah, running the government of Mantua while protecting it from invading armies while hubby was away! But she also knew Fortune can swing both ways.
Our next stop is the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA where we find out why this majorly influential Renaissance Woman may have been the one to hire Dosso Dossi to paint this mysterious scene.
SHOW NOTES (TRANSCRIPT BELOW)
“A Long Look” theme is “Ascension” by Ron Gelinas
Episode theme is “Suite in F Major” composed by Michael Praetorius. Performed by Michel Rondeau. Courtesy of musopen.org
Artwork information
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/822/dosso-dossi-giovanni-di-niccolo-de-lutero-allegory-of-fortune-italian-about-1530/
A Recovered ‘Fortune’ : Renaissance Work Cost $1,000, Sold for $4 Million (Los Angeles Times)
Dosso Dossi info
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1007/dosso-dossi-giovanni-di-niccolo-de-lutero-italian-ferrarese-about-1490-1542/
Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara (PDF)
Isabella info
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings/isabella_d_este
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_d%27Este
“Fickle Fortune: Pinning Down Fortune in 16th Century Italy” by Megan Haddad (2019)
Aleph, UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 16. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kw3v8st
Frank Sinatra “Luck Be A Lady” (YouTube)
TRANSCRIPT
Today I’m looking at Allegory of Fortune by Dosso Dossi
If you want to follow along, you can find it at alonglookpodcast.com/luck
So what do you first notice?
A man and woman sit facing each other, almost filling the canvas. It’s about 7 ft square, so they’re almost life-sized. They’re nude and dramatically lit from the upper right. The woman sits on the right and he’s on the left. He sits a little higher than her, so they form a gentle diagonal from upper left to lower right.
Their bodies are slender but broad with porcelain skin marbled with blue grey shadows. These bruise colored shadows are strange, some create the folds and curves and hollows of their bodies but a lot are just randomly placed on her back, and their arms and torsos. They appear to be around 30 with unlined faces, tinged with peach on their cheeks and lips.
They’re set against a very dark brown background that, combined with the dramatic lighting, gives the scene a very eerie, otherworldly feeling.
The woman sits balancing on a large gleaming bubble, pushing forward on her toes to steady herself. Reminds me of those exercise balls everyone was using years ago. She’s in an odd pose–bending a little at the waist and turning slightly away from us, her stomach rippling with the movement. She gazes with large brown, almond shaped eyes, to a point somewhere past our left shoulder, her mouth slightly open. Her chestnut brown hair is parted in the middle and pulled back, with braids crisscrossing the top of her head.
She cradles a large cornucopia in her arms, overflowing with fruits, leaves and stalks of grain. She holds it like an infant–almost straight up. In the center are apples and a sage green pomegranate with a flush of pink near its top. Two cherries sit at the top balanced by a big cluster of green and purple grapes hanging down at the bottom. They’re surrounded by sage and olive green leaves bursting outwards. The woven horn of plenty this spills out of is checkered in dark brown and gold with a matching bow tied around it.
Her left arm reaches across her body right under her chin to embrace the top while the right curls up from underneath, her hand visible further down the horn. She sits on one end of a green gold cloth that billows wildy up behind her in a S-shaped curve, just brushing the top of the canvas. A matching sandal encloses her left foot but her right foot, visible through the bubble, is bare. Her pose is very protective, turning away from us and the young man beside her.
He fills the left half of the composition and his pose is the opposite of hers. His torso turns towards us but he looks back at her, his face in profile. Short dark brown hair frames brown almond-shaped eyes similar to hers but his mouth is set in a straight line, giving him a wary expression. His wide muscular torso is tinged with peach down the breastbone and is crossed by a deep shadow cast by the young woman.
He’s sitting on a large slanted rock with his far leg stretching out under the cornucopia and behind her bubble while his near leg is bent at the knee, the foot resting on the rock. His left hand, our right, reaches across his body to grab that bent knee, making him corkscrew towards us.
His other arm is raised up and to our left, grasping a bunch of white paper strips in his fist. It almost looks like he’s playing keepaway with her. They’re dangled over a gold urn with looped handles and a small base sitting on the rock next to him. A crimson cloth bordered in gold drapes across his lap and cascades down the rock to the ground on the left side.
Dossi used scrolls of creamy white and earth brown to suggest decoration around the rim of the urn and when I zoom in, I see something that looks like two crowns joined by a wedding ring with looping ribbons and two palm fronds.
Tufts of green grass and pebbles lie scattered at his feet on the ground below.
So why would Dossi paint such a strange image?
MUSIC
So, this is Dossi’s version of Fortuna, the goddess of luck and fate. The man represents Chance, and he’s holding lottery tickets, about to drop them into the urn where they’ll get stirred around before the drawing. This is an allegory painting, which were popular at the time. They were loaded with symbolism to communicate ideas like love, justice, virtue, vice and so on.
Dossi was born in 1490 and lived and worked in Ferrara in northern Italy. Spent pretty much his whole career there, starting in his 20s. He worked primarily for the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este and later his son Ercole II and was hired for all kinds of projects–decorative panels, religious and allegorical paintings like this one. theater sets, tapestries. He even designed banners and flags for court celebrations.
But Dossi was probably commissioned to paint this by Isabella d’Este, the sister of, Duke Alfonso. She was the influential Marchesa of Mantua married to the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, who ruled the nearby city-state. Isabella often ruled by herself since Francesco was often away at his job as Captain General of the Venetian Army. Despite this, they managed to have eight children, one of whom, Federico would inherit the title.
Ever heard someone called a Renaissance Man? The kind of multi-talented guy who love to learn about everything? Well, Isabella was a Renaissance Woman.
She was educated, sophisticated and a huge patron of the arts. She commissioned works by top artists of the day, including Leondardo da Vinci and Titian. And along with raising a family, she also was a talented musician and fashion designer. She even created her own cosmetics and perfume lines.
In addition to all that, were her duties running the government and military while Francesco was away. She had to learn about and decide on issues of criminal justice, diplomacy, public health, and the local economy. She became a great negotiator, even getting Francesco released after being captured by the French during one battle. And all this, while keeping foreign armies from invading Mantua!
As powerful as she was, she was well aware of the vagaries of fortune. For instance, just a few years after they got married, her husband started a years-long affair with her own sister-in-law, Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia was married to her brother Alfonso. Three of her children died. Francesco gets captured. On the up side, she did manage to get him released while successfully protecting Mantua. But when he dies a few years later she loses her title and status in the court, despite serving as her son Federico’s regent. But then Federico becomes ruler and marries Margerita Paleologa, who was from a very powerful family.
So she hired Dossi to tell the story of her triumph over fickle Fortune.
Dossi does a great job emphasizing the dangerous unpredictability of luck. That bubble Fortune sits on is kind of distended and might burst any minute. The cornucopia hints at the literal fortune she might reward you but she’s guarding it. Even her flying drapery and bare foot are symbols reminding us fortune is unpredictable and changeable.
Chance is just about to gamble and studies her trying to predict her response. That look on his face seems to ask, well are you gonna favor me or not?
Monica Haddad wrote a great article about the theory that Isabella commissioned Allegory of Fortune. I’ll include a link in the show notes.
Lotteries had become really popular, and Haddad explains that Isabella took the image of a batch of lottery tickets as her emblem, kind of a personal logo. She definitely had her ups and downs and probably figured it was an accurate symbol and used it all over her rooms.
And there was a belief at the time that if you depicted Fortune in a painting or print, you could control her and therefore your own luck.
So this painting, which was done near the end of her life, was Isabella’s way of saying, “I’m back!” and in control of her fate. With Federico in charge and successfully married, she had regained some of her prestige. Dossi even drives home the point with that inscription on the urn. The two crowns woven with palm fronds represent Federico’s advantageous marriage. She even had a second career in her 60s as ruler of Solarolo, a city in northern Italy.
Now, talk about life imitating art! There’s a great story in the Los Angeles Times from 1989. Allegory hadn’t been seen since the 1800s but a guy finds it at an unclaimed property sale at a warehouse in upstate New York or New England. It was in really bad shape, dirty and damaged but he thought it might be worth something. Now, the canvas is huge, like I said, roughly 7 ft square. He tried to fit it into his van, but it was too big. So he strapped it to the roof and drove straight down to Christie’s auction house in New York City! One of their experts immediately knew it was by Dossi and they put it up for auction. A London art dealer bought it, still damaged and covered in dirt, for $4 million. Our sharp-eyed collector got most of the money and the Getty bought it from the London dealer just a few months later.
OUTRO:
I hope you’ll try out a long look on your next museum visit! Just take a little time and let the art reveal itself.
You can find links to today’s information in the show notes at alonglookpodcast.com and in most podcast apps. While you’re there, you can leave a comment or ask a question. I’d love to hear from you!
And just because I thought it would be fitting, there’s a link to Frank Sinatra’s classic, Luck Be A Lady Tonight!
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One more thing, transcripts are now available at the end of each post!
Thanks for joining me!
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