Dosso Dossi, 'A Man embracing a Woman', 1524-6

In 1980, when this painting was cleaned and restored, it was discovered to be assembled from fragments. It is part of a circular painting (tondo) on wood that was originally made as a ceiling decoration. It was commissioned in 1524 by Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and painted for the Camera del Poggiolo (balcony room) in the Estense Castle, connected to the ducal palace, in Ferrara. Originally it had five figures. The other surviving fragment, Boy with a Basket of Flowers, is now in the Fondazione Longhi in Florence.

In the National Gallery’s painting, two figures, a woman and a man with his hand over her shoulder, lean over a parapet. The figures are painted as if seen from below with what must have been startlingly sharp definition. The woman, whose blonde curls are crowned with a wreath of jasmine, appears to be speaking or singing to the man beside her. The surviving fragment of her hand suggests she was perhaps about to drop something into our space below. The man wears a black jacket and cap and has a sprig of jasmine tucked behind his left ear. The boy in the Fondazione Longhi fragment is laughing and looks as though he is about to tip the flowers from his basket on our heads. The flowers are painted with remarkable accuracy.

The blue of the sky would also have been repeated in the coffering of the ceiling, where it was used as a background for gold rosettes. Technical examination reveals that the ultramarine sky in Dosso’s tondo was painted on top of another background, possibly of imaginary architecture. Documents record that Dosso received copious quantities of ultramarine for this painting, so it is likely that he painted the sky on top of the earlier background, probably as a result of the decision to decorate the ceiling blue.

The tradition of ingenious ceiling decorations to which this tondo belongs originated with the ceiling that Andrea Mantegna painted in the Camera Picta (painted room) of the ducal palace in Mantua between 1465 and 1474. This features a painted oculus (literally ‘eye’), or imaginary circular opening to the sky, with people and cherubs looking over a parapet into the room below. Such decorations often featured members of the household and were humorous or festive in character. Examples existed in several north Italian cities by the 1520s and were certainly to be seen in Ferrara where Garofalo produced examples in the Palazzo Costabili (about 1506) and Palazzo Sacrati (1519).

A 1650 description of Dosso’s tondo said that it included ‘a portrait of il Gonella, who is an old man as well as a great character.’ 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 Gonella was given to other court dwarves during the Renaissance. The man in the National Gallery’s fragment may be Gonella, though he may have been one of the two figures now missing from the tondo. All knowledge of the original meaning of the painting has been lost.