Word: alfonso
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Practically nothing is known of Dosso's life, except for a few dates and contracts. But it was protected: he spent almost all of it working for two rulers of Ferrara, first for Alfonso I d'Este and then, after Alfonso's death in 1534, for his son Ercole II. Dosso was not, of course, painting for a wide public. At the court in Ferrara his audience consisted of the duke and his entourage, including whatever humanists, poets and assorted hangers-on happened to be on the payroll. All courts tend to be self-referential and mannered, and that...
Dosso's job was hardly simple. A 16th century court painter was expected to turn out anything and everything, from ceremonial portraits to painted coach panels, from large allegorical paintings to banners for tourneys, costumes for masques, sets for the theater (which Alfonso delighted in) and perhaps the occasional crucifix or emblem of chastity for the ducal mistress's bedroom. Dosso had to second-guess the veering tastes of his boss--flatter him, keep him interested. And then there were the courtiers to deal with...
...more educated the patron, the more difficult life could get for the artist. Alfonso's elder sister Isabella, the Marquesa of Mantua, was always cooking up complicated literary programs for potential paintings with the help of her court poet; she would then pass the ideas on to Perugino, one of her court artists, with instructions not to invent anything of his own. Something of this kind may have happened at Alfonso's court, whose star poet was none other than Ludovico Ariosto, author of the enormously successful epic Orlando Furioso. Dosso did some paintings that were illustrations of episodes from...
...four Fanjul brothers, Alfonso ("Alfie"), Jose ("Pepe"), Andres and Alexander. Their family dominated Cuba's sugar industry for decades, and they came to this country with their parents in 1959, after Fidel Castro seized power. The Fanjuls arrived just as a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to control the flow of water in the Florida Everglades made large-scale development possible. The total acreage planted in sugar cane there soared--from 50,000 acres in 1960 to more than 420,000 today...
This knack for covering all political bases carries all the way to the top of the Fanjul empire. Alfonso Fanjul served as co-chairman of Bill Clinton's Florida campaign in 1992. His brother Pepe was national vice chairman of finance for Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996 and was host to a $1,000-a-head fund raiser for Dole at his Palm Beach mansion. After Clinton's 1992 victory, Alfie was a member of the select group invited by the Clinton camp to attend the President-elect's "economic summit" in Little Rock...