Valentina Dell'Orto

Il Liber Memorialis e i numerosi atti notarili, conservati presso l'Archivio di Stato di Como, sono punti di partenza imprescindibili per ricostruire la storia del convento agostiniano e della chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie a Gravedona.

Il contributo si pone come obiettivo la ricostruzione della donazione di ceramiche artistiche promossa dalla Fondazione Augusto Richard. La scoperta di numerosi documenti d’archivio ha permesso di far luce sulle provenienze e sulle datazioni di gran parte dei capolavori ceramici del Novecento, scelti durante le Triennali di Arti Decorative e Industriali, che sono entrati a far parte delle Civiche Raccolte di Arte Applicata del Castello Sforzesco di Milano come donazione di questa misteriosa Fondazione. Attraverso il confronto  delle informazioni, contenute nei vari registri dell’Archivio dei Musei del Castello, sono state riscoperte opere credute disperse, come un pregiato vaso in celadon, firmato da Gio Ponti.
Grazie a questo studio è stato possibile anche formulare delle nuove ipotesi sul luogo di conservazione delle ceramiche moderne, appartenenti alle Civiche Raccolte di Arte Applicata, durante gli anni Trenta del Novecento.

The essay aims to reconstruct the donation of the artistic ceramics, promoted by the Augusto Richard Foundation. The discovery of numerous archival documents revealed the provenances and dating of the twentieth-century ceramic masterpieces, selected during the Triennali of Decorative and Industrial Art, which have become part of the Civic Collection of Applied Art of Castello Sforzesco in Milan as a donation from this mysterious Foundation. Thanks to a detailed comparison of the information, preserved in the various registers of the Civic Art Collections Archive of the Castello Sforzesco Museums, some ceramics, believed lost, have been rediscovered, such as a prized celadon vase, designed by Gio Ponti.
Through this study it was also possible to formulate some new hypotheses about the place of preservation of modern ceramics during the 1930s.

The paper reports unpublished  archival documents that testify to the central role of Luciano Scotti in the Augusto Richard National Ceramics Foudantion. The article highlights the fact that Scotti’s activity in the 1930’s is not confined to the management of the Laveno ceramics industry alone, but it goes up to Milan. In this city he establishes a close working relationship with Giorgio Nicodemi, at that time director of the Civic Museums of Castello Sforzesco.

The paper aims to enhance the woodcuts of Dürer’s Life of the Virgin, which are kept in Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense and have never been considered by critics. In particular, it focuses on three episodes representing Joachim and Ann meeting at the Golden Gate, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Betrothal of the Virgin, which are sixteenth-century copies from Dürer and they present the same counterfeit monogram with the initials «AD», stylized and without canonical tablet, mentioned for the first time by Joseph Heller (1827). The success of Dürer’s Life of the Virgin prints had immediately caused the production of copies, up to real plagiarism, so much so that the German artist, increasingly aware of his intellectual property, in 1505 had gone to Venice also to prevent the production of unauthorized copies.
Christine Vogt (2004) tried to reconstruct the corpus of this unknown copyist, starting from northern Europe print collections: she found a group of copies with the same counterfeit monogram and the same state of consumption of the woods, kept in the Bibliothèque National de France and in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
She published as an example the wooodcut representig Joachim and Ann meeting at the Golden Gate, a copy, which is very similar to the one kept in Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.

This paper focuses on the reconstruction of Alvise De Donati’s artistic career and his chronology. Over the Centuries the painter’s fame was obscured by his brothers’ activity as sculptors, who certainly had a greater artistic reputation. Through the study of Alvise’s documents, which are kept in three different State Archives (Milan, Como and Vercelli), I was able to reorder his movements in Northen Italy. The artist was born in Millan and here he had his first apprenticeship, probably in Matteo De Fedeli’s workshop, where he also may have met Giovanni Ambrogio Bevilacqua. In 1490 Alvise lived and worked with his brothers Giovanni Pietro and Giovanni Ambrogio at their workshop in Milan and at the end of the 15th Century he followed them in their art commissions outside Milan, in the territories of Alto Lario and Valtellina. After a period of work in Vercelli with the painter Eleazaro Oldoni, in 1506 he moved to Como, where he worked for churches, monasteries and for rich local families. I tried to reorder the catalogue of paintings signed by and attributed to Alvise De Donati, starting with the canvas of Como bishop’s palace and the ones of Casnate parish church (1500 ca.), to consider then his stylistically highest work: the Madonna with Child of Lyon (1510), which is directly inspired to the Leonardo Da Vinci’s models. Among Alvise’s last known paintings we can find the enigmatic Lamented on the dead Christ of Geneva Art and History Museum (1511 ca.) and the unpublished predella, depicting the twelve Apostles with the Christ in the center, located in the San Fedele church of Buglio in Monte. This predella was probably part of a lost altarpiece commissioned to Alvise De Donati in 1512. Alvise’s last works, like the Berbenno triptych (1513) or the attributed Visgnola polyptych (1515-1520 ca.), show a fall of expressiveness, because he probably fits into Como artistic context, adapting his painting language to the local dialect. We do not know De Donati’s paintings belonging to the second decade of the 15th century, just before his death, because have been lost all his works. We cannot be certain about his adherence to the pictorial revolution, promoted by Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari in Como in the same year. The only elements that open new investigation pathways are those relating to the relationship and the hypothetical collaboration between Alvise De Donati and Sigismondo De Magistris, a painter from Como, whose artistic career has not been reconstructed yet.

- n. 6 Salomon Kleiner, Turris insignium varietate Oeniponti conspicua, pp. 188-189
- n. 19 Aliprando Caprioli, Ritratto di Massimiliano I d'Asburgo, pp. 210-211
- n. 26 Albrecht Dürer, Annunciazione, pp. 224-225
- n. 29 Copia da Albrecht Dürer, Presentazione della Vergine al tempio, pp. 230-231

Il volume analizza, nella molteplicità degli aspetti, le Storie dell'Eneide realizzate nel cortile della residenza, specchio della cultura umanistica che animava la corte di Azzo II e di Agnese Besta, committenti dell'impresa pittorica. Nessuno degli ambienti interni eguaglia l'intensità espressiva di questo spazio, fulcro delle ristrutturazioni rinascimentali e baricentro dell'intero palazzo. Il cortile affrescato di palazzo Besta a Teglio è come una quinta teatrale dipinta, che sembra delineare lo spazio di una rappresentazione scenica, un luogo in cui gli artisti hanno espresso all'aperto le loro storie, le fantasie e le invenzioni, alla stregua di una gigantesca quadreria in continua esposizione.

The volume analyzes, in the multiplicity of aspects, the Stories of the Aeneid made in the courtyard of the residence, a mirror of the humanistic culture that animated the court of Azzo II and Agnese Besta, patrons of the pictorial enterprise. None of the interiors equals the expressive intensity of this space, the fulcrum of Renaissance renovations and the center of gravity of the entire building. The frescoed courtyard of Palazzo Besta in Teglio is like a painted theatrical backdrop, which seems to outline the space of a scenic representation, a place where the artists have expressed their stories, fantasies and inventions outdoors, like a gigantic picture gallery on continuous display.

Alvise De Donati was an undisputed protagonist of the renaissance in Valtellina and Alto Lario, where, at the end of the 15th century, he diffused the artistic novelties from Milan. Although his very first activity is partially clouded in mystery, due to the scarcity of documents and signed works, this essay tries to highlight his contribution to the Dominican church of sant’Antonio in Morbegno. In particular, as stated by Giacinto Fontana’s manuscript (1759-60; sondrio, Pio rajna Library), the names of the patrons of the chapel dedicated to st. Peter Martyr and st. Dominic have been disclosed. thanks to the rediscovery of some fresco fragments in the roof space over this chapel, it was possible to recognise the distinctive style of Alvise De Donati and of the members of his workshop. the research also corroborates the role of Alvise in the church of santa Maria delle Grazie in Gravedona (1509), an important Augustinian building, during the renaissance. In particular, thanks to new stylistic and iconographic comparisons with works signed by him, the Stories of Saint Anthony Abbot and the Madonna and Child between the Saints Peter Martyr and John the Baptist have now been ascribed to him with certainty.