DOVARESE ISLAND – After centuries, confirmation has arrived that an important artist from the Ferrara area – Giuseppe Caletti – was born in Isola Dovarese. «A beautiful discovery – explains the mayor Gianpaolo Gansi -. Isola Dovarese was the birthplace of an important artist who lived and expressed himself in Ferrara in the first half of the seventeenth century at the school of Guercino. Through finding some documents in Ferrara, the researcher Cecilia Vicentini he has in fact understood that Joseph Calettiwho signs himself ‘Cremonese’, was born on ‘Gonzaga Island, State of Bozzolo’ which is today’s Dovarese Island. The scholar had traced back to this data through the Ferrara citizenship which was granted to her brother, Pietro or Pier Antonio Caletti, in 1623».
Vicentini is an associate professor at eCampus University and an expert in the history of Emilian art and collecting between the 16th and 18th centuries. Giuseppe Caletti died in Ferrara in 1641. «Thanks to the collaboration between the island researcher Laura Betterera and with the kind permission of the parish priest Don Antonio Loda Ghida – continues Gansi -, Dr. Vicentini managed to find that of Giuseppe in the baptismal records of the late 1500s Caletti”. The welcome discovery has aroused great satisfaction in the Borgo, so much so that the municipal administration is thinking of dedicating a small square to the artist’s memory, for which the redevelopment project has already begun and whose work will begin in the autumn. A work by Caletti is preserved in the church of Pieve Terzagni. «Vicentini – reports the mayor – came to Isola Dovarese in recent days to understand the environment in which the artist lived».
Caletti’s figure is described as «extremely interesting, bizarre but elusive. He is a painter who in his engravings, a fundamental part of his production made up of paintings, drawings and, indeed, prints, signed himself ‘Giuseppe Caletti Cremonese’. The sources give a portrait that is not too flattering in human terms, described as inconstant in his profession, addicted to the dissolute pleasures of taverns, gambling and accustomed to drawing his sword from under his cloak”. Jerome Baruffaldithe official biographer of Ferrara’s artists, praises masterpieces such as the San Marco today in the Pinacoteca of Ferrara but, in an attempt to trace a biographical profile, reports many inaccurate information.
In fact, he believes he came from Cremona, as the nickname with which he signs himself in the admired etchings suggests, he says he was active in Ferrara for the churches but above all for private collectors and died in 1660. It was thanks to Vicentini’s studies that today it is possible to correct Baruffaldi’s pages by stating with certainty that Giuseppe Caletti was born in Isola Dovarese. If the documents that emerged in the Ferrara archives did not explicitly tell the story of Giuseppe, some notarial deeds identified in the State Archives instead concern Pietro Antonio Caletti, barber, brother of the painter Giuseppe, to whom, dictating his will in 1632, he left all his goods.
Tiziana Gamba, Gianpaolo Gansi, Cecilia Vicentini and Laura Betterera
Pietro Antonio has been defined as a ‘Citizen of Ferrara by privilege’ since 1623, having moved thirteen years earlier from «Isola Gonzaga, state of Bozzolo», an ancient wording that leads back to the current municipality of Isola Dovarese. The teacher therefore got in touch with the Municipality and, immediately supported by the mayor Gansi, was able to transmit her ideas to Laura Betterera, identified by the mayor as the perfect person for this type of investigation, very capable of checking the veracity of the area of some tracks. Bettertera promptly verified the births in Isola at the end of the sixteenth century in the baptismal registers and, with great archivist skill, identified the baptismal certificate of Pietro Antonio in 1594 and that of his brother Giuseppe Carlo Caletti (not Giuseppe Maria as erroneously handed down by the sources) of 9 February 1599, children of Giuseppe and Lucrezia.
It now remains to be understood when Giuseppe arrived in Ferrara, but it seems probable to assume that he moved there in 1610, following his brother, and, plausibly, with his entire family.. Cecilia Vicentini has already published an article in the scientific journal Studi di Storia dell’arte in 2017 presenting some unpublished works by the painter and since then collectors from all over Europe have contacted her to report in their possession a painting with a Calettian air so much so that now the artist has a catalog of around 100 works including paintings, engravings and drawings preserved in the most important museums in the world between Paris, London (National Gallery), Birmingham, Dresden, Stockholm, Naples, Florence, Venice.
The program includes the publication of the painter’s monograph, whose release is scheduled for next year, proposing the systematic reorganization of a vast and varied production, made up of small paintings for private devotion but also of large paintings admired by contemporaries for the spots of scarlet red, for the sumptuous dresses from which very white puffs emerge, for the clouds of ‘cotton’ on leaden skies, for the refined hairstyles of the ladies or for the bloody scenes of beheadings by the various Davids, Jaels or Judiths. After leaving Isola, according to very recent studies, we can hypothesize Caletti’s stay in Cento between 1615 and 1621 in the workshop of the great Guercino from whom he learned his soft painting, with incisive highlighting, with deep shadows and a naturalism of flavour. purely Po Valley.
He certainly knew sixteenth-century culture, from the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi to the Venetians Titian and Giorgione, who he even learned to counterfeit, passing off his works as originals of the Venetian school, the most sought after by collectors of the early seventeenth century. He died in Ferrara in 1641 and during his life he traveled a lot in search of protectors but also of models useful for improving himself. He certainly returned to his place of origin, perhaps recalled by some relative, since in Pieve Terzagni, in the parish church of San Giovanni Decollato, there is a beautiful altarpiece of his: the Guardian Angel presents the soul of a child to the Savior, taking it away from demon. The work was evidently not created for that place but arrived there from some nearby church, perhaps no longer existing, made known a few years ago by Marco Tanzi. To reconstruct its entire history it is now important to trace Giuseppe Caletti’s footsteps in his territories of origin. Paintings by him can still be found here, hidden in private residences or in country churches, perhaps anonymous for now but waiting to be recognized and included in the rich catalog of the painter from Isola Dovarese.
