The Adventures of Ulysses

1435–45

Apollonio di Giovanni (Italian, 1415/17-1465)

Status: On View, Gallery 238
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Apollonio di Giovanni
Title: The Adventures of Ulysses
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1435–1445
Medium: Tempera on panel
Inscriptions: Inscribed, in white pigment: PVLIFEMO (three times on left), VLISSE (seven times in all, but on two occasions, above the scenes of Ulysses found by Nausicaa and Ulysses meeting Irus, very rubbed), [ER]ME, INACO, and PENOLOPE (twice)
Dimensions: 42 × 131.7 cm (16 3/4 × 51 7/8 in.); Framed: 53.3 × 142.2 cm (21 × 56 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1933.1006
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/110760/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Other Objects in the Museum (Chicago: Art Institute, 1913), 197, no. 2088.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Other Objects in the Museum (Chicago: Art Institute, 1914), 208, no. 2088.
Paul Schubring, Cassoni: Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Frührenaissance (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1915), vol. 1, pp. 113, 276, no. 253, vol. 2, pl. 56, no. 253.
Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, and Architecture (Chicago: Art Institute, 1917), 164.
Art Institute of Chicago, Handbook of Sculpture, Architecture, Paintings, and Drawings (Chicago: Art Institute, 1920), 62.
Art Institute of Chicago, Handbook of Sculpture, Architecture and Paintings (Chicago: Art Institute, 1922), 71.
Art Institute of Chicago, Handbook of Sculpture, Architecture, and Paintings (Chicago: Art Institute, 1923), 71.
G. E. Kaltenbach, “Cassoni,” American Magazine of Art 14 (1923): 599, ill.
Frank Jewett Mather, A History of Italian Painting (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923), 182-83.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago: Art Institute, 1925), 159, no. 2018.
Rose Mary Fischkin, Martin A. Ryerson Collection of Paintings and Sculpture, XIII to XVIII Century, Loaned to The Art Institute of Chicago, unpub. MS, 1926, Ryerson Library, The Art Institute of Chicago, pp. 16-17.
Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting vol. 10 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1928), 554.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago: Art Institute, 1932), 180, no. 282.11.
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 346.
Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento (Milan, 1936), 283.
William R. Valentiner, Paintings in the Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, unpub. MS [1932], Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago, n.p.
Wolfgang Stechow, “Marco del Bouno and Apollonio di Giovanni, Cassone Painters,” Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum 1 (1944): 17.
“Meister der Dido-Truhe” in Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 37 (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1950), 79.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago: The Art Institute, 1961), 299.
Hans Huth, “Italienische Kunstwerke im Art Institute von Chicago, USA,” in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae (Munich: Anton Schroll, 1961), 516.
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School (London: Phaidon, 1963), vol. 1, p. 18, vol. 2, figs. 736a-b.
Barbara Wriston, “Joiners’ Tools in The Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 2 (1967): 77, detail ill.
Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 16–19, 53, no. 3, pl. 29.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 12, 478, 571.
Ellen Callmann, “Apollonio di Giovanni and Painting for the Early Renaissance Room,” Antichità viva 27, no. 3-4 (1988): 11, fig. 20.
Christopher Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago : The Art Institute in association with Princeton University Press, 1993), 6-9, ill.
Sophie Desrosiers, “Trois répresentations d’un métier à la tire florentine du XVe siècle,” Bulletin du Centre International d’Étude des Textiles Anciens, no. 71 (1993) : 37–47, fig. 1 (detail).
Ellen Callmann, “Apollo di Giovanni (di Tomaso)” in Dictionary of Art vol. 2 (London: Grove, 1996), 288 (detail ill.).
Graham Hughes, Renaissance Cassoni. Masterpieces of early Italian Art: Painted Marriage Chest 1400–1550 (Sussex: Starcity; London: Art Books International, 1997), 17 (detail ill.).
Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue. Art in Renaissance Italy (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 240, 243, figs. 191 and 193.
Jerzy Miziołek, “The “Odyssey” Cassone Panels from the Lanckoroński Collection: On the Origins of Depicting Homer’s Epic in the Art of the Italian Renaissance,” Artibus et Historiae 27, no. 53 (2006): 57–58, 61–66, 72, 75, figs. 8, 15a, 26a.
Jacqueline Marie Masucchio, Art, Marriage, and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 182, fig. 185.
Caroline Campbell, Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence: The Courtauld Wedding Chests, exh. cat. (London: The Courtauld Gallery, 2009), 24, 32, 33, 38, 43. fig. 7.
Jerzy Miziolek in Virtù d’amore. Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino, exh. cat. (Florence: Galleria dell’Accademia and Museo Horne, 2010), 188, under no. 10 a and b.

London, Royal Academy of Arts, Works by the Old Masters, 1875, cat. 169, as “A Landscape, with Architecture and Figures. Painter Unknown.”
Brooklyn, Institute of Arts and Sciences Museum, European Art, 1450 – 1500, 1936, cat. 15, as Dido Master.
Art Insitute of Chicago, New Light on Old Masters: Early Italian Paintings in the Art Institute, May 29–July 31, 1993.

William Graham (d. 1885), Grosvenor Place, London, by 1875 [lent to London 1875]; sold Christie’s, London, April 8, 1886, no. 172, as “The labours of Ulysses: from a Cassone,” to Martin Colnaghi, acting on behalf of Francis George Baring, for 29 gns.; Francis George Baring, second Earl of Northbrook, from 1886 to at least 1894 [The date 1894 is provided by two labels on the back of the panel]. Robert Langston Douglas, London; sold by Langton Douglas to Julius Böhler, Munich [confirmed by a label on the back of the panel and a letter of April 27, 1987 from Julius Böhler in Margherita Andreotti in curatorial file]; sold by Böhler to Martin A. Ryerson (d. 1932), Chicago, 1911 [bill of sale in Ryerson papers, Art Institute Archives]; on loan to the Art Institute from 1911; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1933.

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