I was fortunate to find an image of this painting by Dosso Dossi (from 1520) online. It was wedged inside my brain in some far-off corner of my decrepit memory. I had seen it at the National Gallery maybe 6 or 7 years ago, when I went to Washington with my gal to see a show of Venetian painting. The city had flooded right at the time we arrived. I remember going to the gallery and no sooner had we checked in our coats and umbrellas when an employee called out that we all had to scram because of flooding in an adjacent building. On our third day there the gallery re-opened and I visited the exhibition. This painting by Dossi reminded me so much of the work of my friend Ed Boccia.
Now Ed is gone and I am trying to write about his technique for a possible Catalogue Raisonne. It is never easy writing about Painting. So much of the magic is impenetrable, despite technical elements that might seem decipherable or explainable or familiar. Why does this work by Dossi remind me of Ed's paintings? Well, it is partly the way that the paint is brushed on. Partly, how the thing is structured, how elements of landscape, for example, are layered, foremost as shapes of a certain color and value, next to one another and closely attuned to the picture plane. The tension between different areas, forms, contours, lines. Also the palette and how it is balanced and unified throughout.
This work is from 1520 and yet it speaks to the universal truths that exist independent of historical time.
Its connection to paintings by Ed Boccia - who was thoroughly grounded and genetically connected to Italian painting of the period - is genuine and poetic and deep. Many in the art trade today have lost sight of the importance of these connections and of the relativity of "sophistication". Many are mired in novelty and aggrandizement and spectacle. I feel blessed to be able to bend backwards and forwards, unconvinced of the trajectory of Art History put forth in many centers of high culture.
