The exhibition Il Cinquecento in Ferrara. Mazzolino, Ortolano, Garofalo, Dosso constitutes the second stage of a broader and more ambitious investigation of the cultural and artistic fabric entitled Renaissance in Ferrara 1471-1598: from Borso to Alfonso II d’Este, i.e. the period between the elevation of the city to a duchy and its transition from the Este dynasty to the direct control of the Papal State. It will be open to visitors until 16 February 2025.
Natural continuation of the Renaissance in Ferrara. Ercole de’ Roberti and Lorenzo Costa (Palazzo dei Diamanti, 18 February – 19 June 2023), the exhibition retraces the artistic events of the early sixteenth century in Ferrara, from the years of the handover from Ercole I d’Este to his son Alfonso I ( 1505) until the death of the latter (1534), a refined client with great ambitions, capable of renovating the private spaces of the court as well as the public ones of the city. The disappearance of the generation of Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti had left Ferrara grappling with the difficult challenge of a high-level replacement. In 1496 the choice to hire Boccaccio Boccaccino indicates the desire to adopt a more modern, softened and soft language. At the beginning of the new century, a new school developed, less endemic and more open to exchanges with other centres, whose protagonists were Ludovico Mazzolino, Giovanni Battista Benvenuti known as Ortolano, Benvenuto Tisi known as Garofalo and Giovanni Luteri known as Dosso.
While Garofalo and Dosso are known to the public, and their path has been explored in an organic way on several occasions 
exhibition, for Mazzolino and Ortolano it is an absolute debut, and more necessary than ever to fully illustrate and better understand the varied panorama of Ferrara painting of the first decades of the 16th century.
The two masters follow rather different paths: Ludovico Mazzolino (Ferrara, c. 1480 – 1528), trained on the models of Ercole de’ Roberti and the first Lorenzo Costa, orients his language in an anti-classical sense, looking at German painting and engravings, from Martin Schongauer to Albrecht Dürer. Although he demonstrates knowledge of Boccaccino and Venetian painting, as well as Raphael and ancient culture, his art is always animated by visionary accents and a noisy vitality that rightfully places him among the “eccentrics” active in northern Italy. He specializes in paintings of impeccable workmanship intended for private collections depicting scenes full of characters with distinctive features 
loaded, almost grotesque physiognomics, completely intolerant of the ideals of grace and balance preached by Perugino and his followers.
Mazzolino’s bizarre flair stands out even more clearly when compared with the attitude of John the Baptist
Benvenuti known as Ortolano (Ferrara, c. 1487 – post 1527), characterized instead by a convinced and sincere naturalism. After his debut influenced by the sweet ways of Boccaccino, Costa and Francesco Francia, Ortolano first oriented himself towards the Venetian culture of Giorgione and then approached the innovations proposed by Raphael. Alongside the large altarpieces executed in the third decade, true masterpieces characterized by a «classicism (…) naturalized due to the illusionistic light» (Longhi), he produces numerous paintings intended for private devotion where Raphaelesque inspiration lights up Venetian suggestions, evident above all in the rendering of the landscape. It is impossible not to be enchanted by the spontaneity with which the artist approaches reality: a clear light isolates the characters and lingers silently on the objects; in the (apparent) simplicity of the compositions one senses the arcane.
Among Ortolano’s references is certainly Benvenuto Tisi known as Garofalo (Ferrara, 1481 – 1559). Formed at Domenico Panetti and Boccaccino, he demonstrated great intelligence from a young age 
figurative which allows him to promptly measure himself with all the innovations that were emerging in the major centers of the peninsula. During the first decade of the sixteenth century he approached Venetian painting and Giorgione, and then moved the center of gravity of his interests towards central Italy. Over the course of his long career, Garofalo was the main Ferrara interpreter and popularizer of Raphael’s style, whose scope he perfectly understood and whose development he followed diligently. His altarpieces, with a calm and elegant manner, populate the city churches, while the precious easel paintings are present in large numbers in private collections.
It moves in parallel with Garofalo Giovanni Luteri known as Dosso (Tramuschio?, c. 1487 – Ferrara, 1542), one of the leading artists of the court of Ferrara under the governments of Alfonso I and Ercole II. Born in the small duchy of Mirandola, he made his debut in
Mantua and in 1513 he moved to Ferrara where he worked, together with Garofalo, on the famous Costabili polyptych in the church of Sant’Andrea (today in the National Art Gallery). During his youth his painting was influenced by Giorgione and Titian, from whom he drew a magnificent depth of color and an entirely Venetian light. At the time of his first work, the spectacular Madonna and Child in Glory and Saints for the Modena Cathedral (1518-21), he was already 
contact with Michelangelo and Roman culture occurred: from here on Dosso developed a personal, cultured and amused style, thanks also to a particular harmony with Alfonso I. If Garofalo monopolized ecclesiastical commissions, Dosso mastered the field of ducal enterprises, in which he deals with allegorical and mythological themes, often taken from Ariosto.
Finally, the city’s painting scene would not be complete without the works of Domenico Panetti, Boccaccio Boccaccino, Lazzaro Grimaldi, Niccolò Pisano, the Master of the Twelve Apostles: thanks to the contribution of these masters, present together with others (Fra Bartolomeo, Romanino, Amico Aspertini , Albrecht Dürer) in the exhibition itinerary, which will have a natural extension in the rooms of the National Art Gallery on the main floor of Palazzo dei Diamanti, the exhibition will accompany the visitor through an incredibly rich season, where the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the profane , history and fairy tales come together in a figurative world that can be defined, in a word, Ferrarese.
Carlo Franza