FERRARA, in the heart of the level valley of the Po, a few kilometres south of the river, has always been of strategic importance. For some 400 years it was held by the Este – of whose line the House of Hanover is a junior branch. Their great brick Castello, begun in 1385 for Niccolò II d’Este by Bartolino da Novara, is the geographical and historic centre of the city, which was significantly extended to the north and east by Borso d’Este (ruled 1450–71) and his half-brother Ercole I (1471–1505). Two blocks to the south is the cathedral, most memorable for its accurately restored Romanesque main portal and Guercino’s trimphant Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in the right transept. The cathedral’s other treasures are shown in the new museum in the nearby church of San Romano: beautifully displayed illuminated choirbooks; Romanesque reliefs removed from the façade; the Madonna of the Pomegranate by that subtlest of Sienese Gothic sculptors, Jacopo della Quercia; and masterpieces of 1469 by the greatest painter of fifteenth-century Ferrara, Cosmè Tura, the dramatic Saint George and the Dragon and touchingly nervous Annunciation, respectively the outer and inner shutters of an organ.
Cathedral and Campanile.
Castello Estense, remodelled by Girolamo da Carpi from 1554.
The Este were deeply cultivated. An illegitimate son, Baldassare, himself became an accomplished painter. Much has been lost, and the major altarpieces of Quattrocento Ferrara have been dismembered. So the Palazzo di Schifanoia, in the eastern part of the town, is a most precious survival. Begun in the late fourteenth century by Alberto d’Este and subsequently enlarged under Borso d’Este and Ercole I, this is most celebrated for the Salone dei Mesi. Only seven of the original murals of the months survive. These are by Tura’s contemporary, Francesco del Cossa, and the young Ercole de’Roberti. Their imaginative and discursive compositions capture the world of Borso’s court, its extravagance and dynamism, its douceur de vivre. They remind us too of the inextricable links between Renaissance towns and the rural life that supported them. Piero della Francesca had worked for the Este. And there are echoes of his art in the Schifanoia frescoes, but their painters had very different aesthetic preoccupations than that austere genius. They sought to delight and to divert. And so they do.
There are other notable Renaissance palaces. Biagio Rossetti’s unfinished Palazzo di Ludovico il Moro, built for Ercole I’s ambassador to Milan, to the south of the Palazzo di Schifanoia, now houses the archaeological museum. Better known is the Palazzo dei Diamanti, on the Corso Ercole d’Este, north of the Castello. This was begun about 1493 by Rossetti for Sigismondo d’Este. The spectacular façade with blocks of white diamond-pointed marble still clamours for attention. The type spawned a considerable progeny in Italy, Spain and as far afield as Crichton Castle in Scotland.
The palace now houses the Pinacoteca Nazionale, with a comprehensive holding of Ferrarese pictures. There are fragments of Tura’s lost altarpiece of 1474 from Sant’Andrea and panels by his contemporaries. The High Renaissance is strongly represented. Interest now focuses on Dosso Dossi, a wayward genius whose poetic landscapes reveal the fascination of the plainsman for the hills. But it was not always so, and works by Benvenuto Tisi, il Garofalo – for example, the central panel of his Costabili altarpiece from Sant’Andrea – show why that artist was considered a northern Italian counterpart of Raphael. The later masters of Ferrara are also appealing: Scarsellino, consistently enchanting, particularly on a small scale; and Carlo Bononi, individual in colour and subtle in his interpretation of the artistic revolution of the Carracci at Bologna.
On the death of Alfonso II d’Este in 1597, Ferrara reverted to papal rule, the Este retaining their duchy of Modena. Ferrara paid a heavy artistic price, losing such masterpieces as the Bellini Feast of the Gods now in Washington, DC, and the early Titian Bacchanals in Madrid, not to mention the London Bacchus and Ariadne. But despite what it has suffered, Ferrara retains a strange magic. Bicyclists happily still outnumber drivers, and as the sun clears the morning mist one can imagine that Borso and his courtiers might be preparing to set out for the chase.
