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THE ROAD OF MASTELLETTA
CALL
- Giovanni Andrea Donducci, known as the Mastelletta (Bologna, 1575-1655), was a Baroque painter belonging to Carracci's school who spent part of his life in Sasso Marconi. He is remembered for having contributed to the decorations of the chapel of Saint Domenic's Basilica in Bologna between 1613 and 1614. Mastelletta, a strange and irritable character, spent some time in the village of Tintoria (part of Sasso Marconi) in the early 1600s looking for a peaceful place where he could concentrate on his work. He had not counted on the sound of shepards playing on the zufolo, their little wooden flutes. After fruitless protests, he decided to buy the pipes off the shepherds hoping to inhibit their playing, resulting in an onslaught of local peasants flocking to his house hoping to sell him their flutes. He then tried moving to a nearby cottage on the banks of the Reno, but here he was disturbed by the croaking of frogs. He sought in vain to frighten them away by banging the water with a hanging stick. Nowadays the bothersome flutes are a thing of the past, but the marvellous landscapes Mastelletta painted of this path linking the center of Sasso Marconi with the hamlet of Fontana, by way of the banks of the Reno, linger on. La Rupe (The Cliff), in the ancient, rock-hewn church, Mastelletta played the organ for his own amusement and painted the images of Saints Sebastian and Roch Cà Tintoria, taking the road along the Reno river (just after the Setta flows into it, background for many of Donducci's paintings) Palazzo Sanuti, residence of Nicolò Sanuti, the first Count of Porretta