The exhibition, curated by Vincenzo Farinella and Laura Dal Prà, exhibits a hundred works at the library of Bernardo Cles at the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento from 1 July to 22 October 2023 - including sculptures, prints, volumes and paintings such as the famous painting of Heraclitus and Democritus by Donato Bramante from the Pinacoteca di Brera, the marble busts of Homer and Cicero loaned from the Capitoline Museums in Rome and the Uffizi, the two magnificent canvases by Dosso from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Chrysler American Museum and still works by Moretto, Salvator Rosa, Andrea Pozzo, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, Vincenzo Grandi, Albrecht Duerer and Josè de Ribera.
The panels are compared on the one hand with paintings having the same subject but made by other painters, on the other with works by Dosso Dossi and Battista executed shortly before or shortly after the years of activity in Trento this to focus on the problem of the collaboration of the two brothers.
Finally, also in ideal connection with the identity of the Sapienti dosseschi, the path develops from a precious series of busts depicting philosophers and scientists of the ancient world to then include masterpieces of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the images of the most illustrious scholars organized in real cycles will be very successful.
Fame that will give life to a very lucky iconographic genre, enriching private collections and collections and supporting the erudite culture of the patrons of the time.
Between the end of 1531 and the first months of 1532 Dosso Dossi, with the help of his brother Battista, decorated the library of the prince-bishop Bernardo Cles in the Magno Palazzo del Castello del Buonconsiglio di Trento.
For the room that was to house the precious and rich collection of ancient books by the Trentino Cardinal, Dosso thinks of an imposing decoration.
On the walls he creates frescoes (mostly lost) while for the coffers of the ceiling he paints a series of eighteen paintings on a spruce board depicting sages, philosophers and orators of antiquity.
A wonderful environment that Mattioli, a court doctor, compares in the poem he published in 1539 on the Magno Palazzo, to Michelangelo's Sistina and Raphael's Psyche loggia in Villa Chigi, now Villa Farnesina.
The exhibition inaugurated on 30 June at the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento entitled "The Faces of Wisdom" is based on the restored panels and images of scholars, philosophers and sages, starting from ancient art. Dosso and Battista Dossi in the Library of Bernardo Cles", which can be visited until 22 October 2023.
It is an incredible and extraordinary opportunity to see them up close for the first time thanks to the disassembly and restoration (currently underway in the Clesian Library) and to learn about the many vicissitudes that have affected these works.
In March 1813 the eighteen boards, after being removed from the ceiling of the Libraria Clesiana, were brought, at the behest of the Prefect of South Tyrol Filippo Dalfiume, to the Imperial Regio Ginnasio Liceo di Trento (today the Liceo Prati).
In 1922 the superintendent Giuseppe Gerola had them brought back to the castle but found only twelve, six were lost between 1813 and 1896. The restoration has brought this magnificent pictorial cycle led by the restoration firm Enrica Vinante to its ancient splendour.
