Giovanni Francesco Luteri, called Dosso Dossi Tramuschio di Mirandola, Modena c.1486 – Ferrara 1542
NG 1234 
A Man embracing a Woman

Giorgia Mancini, Nicholas Penny, 2016

Extracted from:
Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume III: Bologna and Ferrara (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).

1524–6

Oil on poplar, 55.1 × 75.5 cm

Support

This painting is an assemblage of fragments from a circular picture (tondo) on poplar that was made as a ceiling decoration.¹ It consists of a large rectangular portion (52 × 73.2 cm) to which other fragments were added, as described below and illustrated in the diagram (fig. 1). The tondo was originally about 140 cm in diameter, a size of panel that would normally be composed of several boards. There is a tight join that is difficult to discern, but a butterfly key at the upper right of the reverse, very neat and probably original, and the fragment of a second one at the middle of the bottom edge, show that it runs diagonally across the woman’s right shoulder and chest. The other surviving fragment of the tondo, Boy with a Basket of Flowers, is now in the Fondazione Longhi in Florence but has been transerred transferred to canvas (fig. 2).²

The large portion is approximately 2.5 cm thick, with a pronounced diagonal grain and a slightly twisted convex warp. A curved piece has been cut out of the rectangle from the top left edge, probably showing another head next to that of the female figure, and a small triangular piece is missing from the bottom right corner. Suitably shaped pieces of painted wood were inserted to complete the rectangle; these pieces must have been cut from the same tondo panel, as were the long, thin, wedge‐shaped fragments added on all four sides, enlarging the main rectangular piece to its present dimensions and slightly canting the axis so that the male figure appears upright. The additions were glued and nailed very firmly to the main fragment and have assumed the same warp, despite the different alignments of their wood grain.

On three of the wedge‐shaped extensions (C, E and H in the diagram) there are sections of the same curved parapet that is visible on the main piece of wood, above which there are areas of black paint that appear to be identical to that of the man’s garment, and then the blue paint of the sky. These fragments seem to have been removed from the right‐hand edge of the main piece of wood in the order C, H, E, and the curved fragment B, now inserted in the top left corner, is likely to have been cut from an area with clouds just above them. The original position of the fragment attached to the bottom edge (G) was to the left of the female figure, as it includes part of a hand that clearly belonged to her foreshortened right arm. It is more difficult to establish the original position of the small triangle on the lower right corner (F). The Boy with a Basket of Flowers was probably positioned directly above the National Gallery’s fragment, since the curved piece missing from its top left corner allows for the removal of the National Gallery fragment B. The jagged outline of the right‐hand edge of the Fondazione Longhi picture suggests that a figure was immediately to the boy’s left.

A diagonal channel was cut across the back of the support, probably to hold a batten. The channel must have been cut after the fragments were assembled, as it runs through the extensions to the bottom and right edges. On the reverse, the areas around the additions were coated with a thin layer of gesso and painted pink (later covered with gummed paper), probably to disguise the joins.

Materials and technique

The poplar panel was prepared with a layer of gesso (calcium sulphate), followed by a relatively thick oil‐bound priming, dark, brownish grey in colour, composed of lead white, a coarse black pigment that has been identified as coal,³ a little umber and lead‐tin yellow.⁴ The layer structure in the sky is particularly complex: over the dark grey‐brown priming, several red‐brown paint layers can be seen in cross‐sections. Above these there is a translucent yellow‐brown layer with a strong fluorescence under ultraviolet light, which has been identified as sandarac varnish.⁵ The blue paint of the sky, which lies on top of this varnish, consists of a first layer of azurite and lead white (left exposed in some areas, such as the clouds), followed by a layer of high‐quality ultramarine combined with varying quantities of lead white. The binding medium of samples of the blue and the brown paint has been identified as heat‐bodied walnut oil.⁶

Since documents reveal that Dosso received copious quantities of ultramarine for this painting, it is reasonable to suppose that he painted the sky. The brown layers beneath are probably connected with an earlier idea for the background, perhaps architectural, although the amount of lead white present in the sky above makes it impossible to confirm this by means of X‐radiography.

X‐radiographs show that the wreath of jasmine worn by the female figure replaced a headdress with stiff textile tufts (fig. 4; these are yellow and are just visible underneath the paint of the flowers). Another alteration to the present painting is the position of the woman’s pearl earring, which originally hung at a different angle, perhaps in an attempt to suggest movement. The male figure was originally bare‐headed. Part of the hat later added by Dosso covers the woman’s forehead, pushing her head behind that of the man. This change gave rise to an awkward spatial arrangement, as she is clearly meant to be leaning over the parapet. X‐radiographs also reveal that adjustments were made to the painting of the inner edge of the parapet, even though the main curves of the moulding had been carefully incised. Similar incisions feature in the Fondazione Longhi Boy with a Basket of Flowers fragment.

Condition

Apart from drying defects and a few small losses, the figures are in remarkably good condition. Areas of flesh paint show a network of wrinkles and fine drying cracks, which are especially evident around the eyes, nose and upper lip of the female figure. The wrinkling and cracking are more pronounced in the blue paint of the sky. This is probably a consequence of the many paint layers in this area of the picture, as described above. Similar drying defects are found in the boy’s face and the sky in the Fondazione Longhi fragment.

Conservation

The painting has a history of flaking, which has required consolidation, but no other treatment had been carried out between the date of its acquisition by the National Gallery and 1980, when it was cleaned and restored and discovered to be an assemblage of fragments. The repaint that disguised the fragments around the edges and the putty along the joins were removed during the cleaning and the edges were tidied up by filling and retouching, although the gaps between the pieces of wood were left visible.

Subject

Two figures, a woman and a man with his hand resting on the woman’s shoulder, appear to be leaning over a parapet. The man wears a black jacket and cap; the collar of a chemise escapes from the former and a sprig of jasmine is tucked behind his left ear. The woman wears a green robe edged with ribbons of red and yellow shot silk, over a translucent chemise of pale yellow with patterned stripes alternating in green and pink. Her blonde curls are crowned by a wreath of jasmine.

The tondo of which NG 1234 is a fragment belongs to a tradition of ingenious ceiling decorations originating with the oculus (or fictive circular opening to the sky) by Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) in the ceiling of the Camera Picta of the ducal palace in Mantua. These decorations, virtuoso in their foreshortening, humorous in character and often featuring portraits of household members, animals, fruit and flowers, may have been found by the 1520s in several [page 121]northern Italy cities and were certainly to be seen in Ferrara, where Garofalo produced examples in the Palazzo Costabili (about 1506) and Palazzo Sacrati (1519).⁷

For the Camera del Poggiolo, Dosso created an oculus with five figures leaning into the opening. As with the Allegories, painted for the ceiling of the nearby bedchamber of Alfonso I, the figures are painted as if seen from below, with less pronounced foreshortening than those of Mantegna and Garofalo, but with what must have been startlingly sharp definition. The blue of the sky would also have been repeated in the coffering of the ceiling, where it was used as a background for the gold rosettes (indeed, the decision to repaint the background of the painting seems to have coincided with the decision to gild the ceiling). In the Boy with a Basket of Flowers fragment, the flowers tumbling into the room are painted with remarkable accuracy, anticipating the realism of seventeenth‐century still‐life paintings. Daniele Benati has pointed out that, since this and similar paintings by Dosso ended up in Roman collections after 1598, they may have had a significant influence on the emergence of this genre.⁸ (It is noteworthy that just before starting work on the tondo, Dosso received payment for some pictures of flowers and fruit that he had painted for the duke, now unfortunately lost.)⁹

Letters concerning the acquisition of the tondo by Cardinal Scipione Borghese tell us nothing about the subject, but in 1650 Giacomo Manilli wrote, in his description of the Villa Borghese, that the tondo included ‘a portrait of il Gonnella, who is an old man, as well as a great character’.¹⁰ Pietro Gonnella, or Gonella (1390–1441), was the most famous of the many dwarves attached to the Este court. Although he lived in the fifteenth century, his fame was such that the nickname Gonnella was given to other court dwarves during the Renaissance.¹¹ Manilli may have had access to a reliable source and the realistic features of the male figure in NG 1234 do suggest that it may be a portrait, but the same could be true of the two lost figures, one of which might well have depicted someone older than the man in black. By the nineteenth century, after the tondo had been dismembered and reshaped, all knowledge of its original context and meaning had been lost. Indeed, when NG 1234 was sold in 1868 and 1878 it was catalogued (and had probably long been considered) as a portrait by Giorgione of Boccaccio and his muse, Fiammetta.¹² After its acquisition by the National Gallery, it was described rather more safely as A Muse inspiring a Court Poet.

Amorous couples can be found in some of the diamond‐shaped panels that Dosso painted (probably between 1515 and 1522) for the ceiling of Duke Alfonso’s bedchamber in the Via Coperta,¹³ notably those now known as The Embrace (or Love), Seduction and Violence,¹⁴ but the relationship of the couple in NG 1234 is not easy to determine. It might be taken as burlesque, if the male character were older (like the white‐haired and bearded men featured in the Via Coperta panels).¹⁵ The man’s right hand is resting on the woman’s right shoulder; she turns towards him with her mouth open, as if she is singing. Her arm must have projected over the parapet, and the surviving fragment of her right hand (fragment G) suggests that the fingers were closed, perhaps holding some flowers that she was poised to drop on the viewer’s head.

Ludwig Baldass pointed out the similarities of NG 1234 to the Bacchus and Ariadne by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo (1460–1532) now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.¹⁶ Tullio’s brother Antonio (about 1458–1516) had worked for Duke Alfonso I d’Este during the first decade of the sixteenth century, and it is possible that Dosso saw this relief, or a similar one.

An idea of what Dosso’s tondo might have looked like can be obtained from two later examples of ceiling paintings with figures leaning over parapets: the octagon (1540) by Niccolò dell’Abate with members of the Boiardo family playing musical instruments, once in the castle in Scandiano (Galleria Estense, Modena), and Fame and the Arts of the Quadrivio (about 1555, present location unknown) by Girolamo Romanino (1485–1566) and Lattanzio Gambara (1530–1574).¹⁷

Attribution and dating

Throughout the seventeenth century and in the early eighteenth century the tondo from which NG 1234 was later cut was known to be by Dosso Dossi,¹⁸ but when exported from Rome in the early years of the nineteenth century the painting in its current form was probably already described as a work by Giorgione, under which name it was sold in 1868, 1878 and 1887. Only after its acquisition by the National Gallery in 1887 was it returned to Dosso,¹⁹ an attribution that was generally accepted in the twentieth century.²⁰ In 1911 Walter Zwanziger, noting stylistic and iconographic similarities to the allegorical panels painted for the ceiling of Alfonso I’s bedroom in the Via Coperta mentioned above, suggested a possible connection with a decorative cycle elsewhere in the Este castle.²¹ This idea was accepted by a number of scholars who, however, assigned it to very different moments in the artist’s career.²²

Only in the late 1970s was NG 1234, together with the Boy with a Basket of Flowers fragment now in the Fondazione Longhi, associated with the tondo painted by Dosso in 1524 for the ceiling of the Camera del Poggiolo.²³ This hypothesis, advanced by Gugliemo Galli after the restoration of the Fondazione Longhi picture, was confirmed by discoveries made during the cleaning of NG 1234 (described in the technical sections below (a, b)) and has been supported in all the recent literature.²⁴

On 3 September 1524 Dosso received payments for ‘uno tondo in la suffita della via coperta’ (‘a tondo in the ceiling of the Via Coperta’) and, later in that year, on 22 December, for ‘uno tondo in lo suffitto della camara del Pozzuollo’ (‘a tondo in the ceiling of the Camera del Pozzuollo’).²⁵ A document of 5 January 1526 records a payment for ultramarine that was to be used for the tondo (‘azuro oltramarino messo a campezare il Tondo del suffito novo in la camera del pozuollo’; ‘ultramarine blue needed to cover the tondo in the new ceiling in the Camera del Pozuollo’),²⁶ which may explain the large areas of paint containing ultramarine that were added [page 122] to the sky of NG 1234, after it had been varnished. Work on the ceiling of this room was probably completed in 1526, as is suggested by payments for the dismantling of the scaffolding in September of that year.

The present picture, a rare example of a documented work by Dosso, provides reliable evidence of the artist’s style in the mid‐1520s. The female figure is similar in style to Dosso’s Apollo (1524) in the Galleria Borghese and his Sybil (1524–5) in the Hermitage (fig. 5).²⁷ The sharp contrasts of light and shade and the emphasis on sculptural forms in these works have been supposed to be a response to the paintings of Giulio Romano, who arrived in the neighbouring court of Mantua in 1524.²⁸ The treatment of the male figure is comparable to other portraits by Dosso, such as the Bearded Man (Antonio Costabili?) in the Saibene collection, Milan, dating from about 1521.²⁹

The Camera del Poggiolo and the ‘Cielo’ painted by Dosso

The Camera del Poggiolo was one of a suite of rooms that were built above a raised corridor linking the Este castle with the ducal palace in Ferrara.³⁰ This suite, known as the Via Coperta, was built by Duke Ercole I d’Este in 1471 but renovated in 1499. It was altered again, after a few years, by Alfonso I, who in 1508 commissioned the Camerino d’Alabastro and, in 1518–19, the Fabbrica dei Camerini, an apartment that included refurbished rooms as well as new ones. The new rooms were adorned with marble floors, windows of clear glass and gilded ceilings. Dosso and his assistants were commissioned to decorate them between 1520 and 1529.³¹

Documents indicate that work was carried out in the Camera del Poggiolo in 1518.³² The construction of the balcony – from which the room takes its name (pezuolo or pezuollo in old Ferrarese dialect; poggiolo in modern Italian) – was completed by the end of that year, as recorded in a letter to Isabella d’Este.³³ Because of significant gaps in the Este account books between 1520 and 1523, it is difficult to trace the progress of the works in this room. However, payments for carpentry are recorded in the first months of 1524, and in May painters began the gilding of the elements of the ceiling. [page 123] The installation of the ceiling was begun in September, but the decoration of the room seems to have continued until the autumn of 1526, when the scaffolding was removed (see Appendix below).

On 10 and 14 October 1526 Dosso, Battista and the apprentices (Jacopo, Giulio, Giaran and Filippo) were paid for painting the ‘sky’ of the room (‘il ciello della camera del pezuollo’).³⁴ It has been suggested that this is a retrospective payment for the ceiling – that is, the tondo ³⁵ – but this seems unlikely: judging from the number of days for which they were paid (15 by Dosso, 11 by Battista, and more than 45 by the four assistants) and the materials for which they were reimbursed, the work carried out must have been more extensive. Although one of the obvious meanings of the word ciello is ceiling, the ceiling is always referred to in the payments as suffitta or suffito, while the roundel by Dosso is referred to as the tondo. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the word ciello here refers to something different. Of some help in this connection is the payment – made on the same day as the first payment to Dosso for the ‘sky’ (10 October) – to the carpenter Antonio Taione for ‘fichare le telle del ciello dela cam[ar]a del pezollo’ (‘fitting the canvases of the sky of the camera del Poggiolo’).³⁶ The function of these canvases was probably to protect the recently finished ceiling from smoke emanating from the fireplaces; we know that canvases intended to serve this purpose were painted by Dosso and his assistants in 1524 and 1529.³⁷ More significantly, a payment to Francesco da Modena refers to a ciello (‘sky’ or ‘canopy’) that had been sewn ‘per il letto della camara del signor’ (‘for the bed of the lord’s room’).³⁸

Related works

As mentioned above, technical examination has established that the Boy with a Basket of Flowers in the Fondazione Longhi, Florence (fig. 2), was part of the same tondo as NG 1234.³⁹ It was similarly transferred to canvas and then enlarged with new canvas additions that gave it a more regular shape.⁴⁰ The same may have happened to the third fragment depicting two figures, which has yet to be discovered.⁴¹

From the Este castle to Villa Borghese

After his appropriation of Ferrara for the Papal States in 1598, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, the papal legate (and Pope’s nephew), removed the most famous works of art from the castle to Rome. Duke Cesare d’Este (1553–1628), who had moved his court from Ferrara to Modena in that same year, was still technically the owner of the fabric of the castle and we know that the tondo painted by Dosso remained on the ceiling of the Camera del Poggiolo in March 1600, when the surveyor Bartolomeo Colletta recorded it in his valuation of Cesare’s property.

In February 1608 Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of the new pope, Paul IV, expressed a desire to acquire some pictures from the Camerino d’Alabastro from which certain other quadri had been cavati (extracted) and given – not, of course, what had really happened – to ‘signor Cardinale Aldobrandino’.⁴² The pictures he wanted were frieze paintings by Dosso of stories from the Aeneid. Cesare agreed but his agent, Giustiniano Masdoni, gave the Cardinal’s emissary, Enzo Bentivoglio, the wrong paintings: nine mandorle and a large tondo with five heads by Dosso, which had originally decorated the ceilings of two camerini (‘che servivano per sfondato di due camerini’).⁴³ In a letter from Bishop Innocenzo Massimo (1581–1633) to Cardinal Borghese of 22 March 1608, the tondo is described as: ‘tondo grande cinque palmi con cinque teste che è cosa bellissima et rara’ (‘five palmi [in diameter] with five heads, which is a most beautiful and rare thing’).⁴⁴ After the mistake had been discovered, it was decided that, in addition to the pictures he originally requested, the cardinal should receive the tondo and four of the mandorle.⁴⁵ The tondo arrived first in Rome and the cardinal greatly admired it.⁴⁶

Amalia Mezzetti was the first to suggest the identification of the nine ‘sfondati a oliva’ or fragments of oval or olive shape – that is, the pictures previously described as ‘mandorle’ (almond shape) – with the panels by Dosso for the duke’s bedchamber, and the large tondo with the roundel by Dosso for the Camera del Poggiolo, all mentioned in the valuation of Cesare d’Este’s property compiled in 1598 by Alfonso del Benmambri.⁴⁷ In the inventory compiled before the cardinal’s death in 1633 the tondo is described as hanging in the second room towards the uccelliera (aviary) in the Villa Borghese as ‘un quadro in tavola con dodici angeli [sic, angoli] con cinque teste una con la corona in capo una con fiori in mano, cornice dorata, alto cinque [palmi]’ (‘a picture on panel of twelve corners with five heads, one wearing a crown, one with flowers between the hands, gilded frame, five [palmi] tall’).⁴⁸ In 1650 Giacomo Manilli described the painting by Dosso as having a dodecagonal frame and depicting five heads, including ‘Gonnella, who is an old man next to a big figure’.⁴⁹ The picture was still in the Villa Borghese in 1700, when Domenico Montelatici saw it in the ‘camera delle Tre Gratie’ (‘room of the Three Graces’), between two of the mandorle (now transformed into rhomboids), next to a fireplace above which there was a copy of Titian’s Bacchanal of the Andrians by Cavaliere d’Arpino (1568–1640).⁵⁰

From Rome to Trafalgar Square

It is not known when the tondo was sold from the Borghese collection, although this is likely to have happened after the Napoleonic occupation of Rome in 1798–9, when the financial crisis caused by political turmoil forced many noble families to sell works of art.⁵¹ By 1828 NG 1234 was already in the United Kingdom, if it was the painting sold by a certain Mr King to Thomas B. Bulkeley Owen, as stated in the catalogue of the latter’s sale at Christie’s in 1868.⁵² At this sale it was purchased by Colnaghi for 190 guineas (£199 10s.). Probably soon after, the painting entered the collection of John Heugh, at whose sale on 11 May 1878 (lot 276) at Christie’s in London it was bought by Thomas Agnew and Sons for 70 guineas (£73 10s.).⁵³ It was sold by them at Christie’s on 25 June 1887, where it was purchased for 25 guineas (£26 5s.) by Charles Fairfax Murray, acting for the National Gallery.⁵⁴

Copy

A copy of NG 1234 by Frances Mostyn Owen recently appeared on the art market.⁵⁵ In 1832 Frances, who was a friend of Charles Darwin, married Robert Myddelton Biddulph of Chirk Castle in Denbighshire. Her father, William Mostyn Owen, knew Thomas Bulkeley Owen of Tedsmore Hall, Shropshire (owner of NG 1234 from 1828 to 1867).⁵⁶ It is therefore possible that it was through her father that Frances had access to the painting then kept at Tedsmore Hall. The copy may have been painted around 1844, the date inscribed on Frances Mostyn Owen’s copy after a Madonna and Child by Federico Barocci (1528–1612), also in the collection of Thomas Bulkeley Owen.⁵⁷

Provenance

See above (a, b, c). Painted for a room in the ‘Via Coperta’ in Ferrara, whence removed after March 1600. By 1608 in the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese and kept in the Villa Borghese until at least 1700 and probably there until about 1800. Apparently sold by ‘Mr King’ to Thomas B. Bulkeley Owen in 1824 and after his death sold at Christie’s, London, to Colnaghi in 1868. Thereafter recorded in the collection of John Heugh, from whose sale in 1878 it was bought by Thomas Agnew’s, who sold it at Christie’s in 1887, where it was purchased for the National Gallery.

Framing

The painting was exhibited, after conservation in 1980, in a plain black wooden box. In the mid‐1990s the current frame was adapted from lengths of nineteenth‐ or early twentieth‐century carving from the frame store, in which ribbons, the fruit, the centre of the broadly carved oval hollows at the outer edge and the leaves at the corners are gilded.

Appendix 1
The Camera del Poggiolo in the Este castle

Payments to the carpenters Nicolò da Correggio and Lionello for work on the room’s ceiling (‘suffitta dela cam[ar]a del pezuollo’) are recorded in January 1524.⁵⁸ This work was carried out during the months that followed, as documented by payments to Nicolò da Correggio and his colleagues Angelo da Modena and Antonio Taione on 20 February, 5 and 19 March and 23 April 1524.⁵⁹

On 7 May the carpenter Tuxino was paid for making a pair of trestles for use in the gilding of the ceiling.⁶⁰ It is therefore likely that the gilders were about to begin work on the components of the ceiling. Indeed, the first payment to the painters Filippo and Sansone is dated 14 May 1524.⁶¹ Payments to this team, which also included Sansone, Zoane Tedesco and an assistant, are recorded weekly throughout the year.⁶² Although it seems unlikely that this campaign would have lasted for a very long time, a list of payments to Filippo ‘for the gold that he puts in place on the ceiling of the camera del Poggiolo’ indicates that it continued at least until the end of October 1525.⁶³ This is confirmed by payments for a significant amount of gold leaf purchased in August and October 1525 for the same ceiling.⁶⁴ The ceiling compartments were not only gilded but were also painted blue, as documented by expenses for blue pigment that was given to the painter Filippo for the ‘quadri’ of the ceiling, for which Dosso was reimbursed on 24 September 1524.⁶⁵ Furthermore, documents pertaining to the restoration of the same ceiling in 1592 record the presence of compartments painted in blue (see below).

The first payments for scaffolding in this room date from 3 September 1524.⁶⁶ That the coffered ceiling – prepared and gilded in a workshop – was about to be put in place is confirmed by a payment on 10 September to a porter responsible for preparing the scaffolding ‘where the ceiling is to be set up’.⁶⁷ In October a wood‐turner, Antonio, was paid for fashioning the rosettes for the ceiling.⁶⁸ Carpentry work on the ceiling is documented in the final months of 1524.⁶⁹ At the end of October 1525 Filippo spent two days ‘painting in blue the friezes of the camera del Poggiolo ceiling’.⁷⁰ A payment to Dosso on 5 January 1526 for ultramarine for the tondo (for which he had been paid in September and December 1524) suggests that the tondo had not yet been set up. Work in this room was likely to have been completed before 28 September 1526, when the carpenter and the porter were paid for dismantling the scaffolding and taking it away.⁷¹

The ceiling of the Camera del Poggiolo, measuring 8 × 5.47 m, was exceptionally rich in craftsmanship and materials.⁷² In Alfonso del Benmambri’s 1598 valuation of Cesare d’Este’s property the ceiling is described as gilded, with carved rosettes and a painted oculus (valued at 600 scudi),⁷³ while a valuation made in 1600 describes it as having 20 gilded ‘rosoni’ (‘rosettes’) and a carved and gilded ‘cornicione’ (‘frieze’).⁷⁴ An idea of how the ceiling might have looked is provided by the coffered ceiling of the Camera della Stufa in the Este castle, dating from 1559, which features elaborately painted and carved ornamentation.⁷⁵

Only a few years before the devolution of Ferrara to the papal states the camerini of the Via Coperta underwent a restoration campaign. Scaffolding was erected in May of 1592 for ‘washing the ceiling’ of one of the rooms, gold leaf was supplied to restore the rosettes, and the blue compartments were refreshed. A later payment to the restorer, the Ferrarese painter Gaspare Venturini (died 1593), records that the ceiling was that of the Camera del Poggiolo (‘camarin del pegiolo’).⁷⁶ The rosoni were restored by the Flemish woodcarver Orazio Lamberti.

Appendix 2
Documents

3 September 1524

m. Dosso depintore debe dare L. trenta marchesane per lui se fanno buoni alla Ducale Camara per tanti ha facto pagare per compto de fare uno Tondo in la suffitta della via coperta videlicet L. xxx⁷⁷

22 December 1524

m. Dosso depintore debe dare adi XXII dicto L. trenta marchesane per lui se fanno buoni alla Ducale camara per tanti li ha facto pagare per comto de fare uno tondo in lo suffitto della camara del Pezuollo L. xxx⁷⁸

5 January 1526

A m. Dosso. Spexa della via coperta per onze ½ de Azuro ultramarino messo a campezare il Tondo del suffitta novo in la camara del Pezuollo a ragione de ducati 6 la onza a soldi 62 per ducato L. 9.6.0⁷⁹

Notes