DOSSO DOSSI

born 1479, 90, Mantua?, March of Mantua died 1542, Ferrara, Duchy of Ferrara original name Giovanni Lutero, or Luteri late Italian Renaissance painter, the leader of the Ferrarese school in the 16th century. He is first recorded in 1512, in Mantua, but by then he must have been in Venice and absorbed the art of Giorgione, whose style dominates Dosso's Nymph and Satyr. He may also have seen some of the early works of Titian. His style was founded on the romantic approach to landscape, which reached its highest expression in Giorgione's Tempest, but Dosso also added something of Titian's richness and a personal quality of fantasy, which reflects his knowledge of the works of the Ferrarese painters Cosm Tura, Francesco del Cossa, and Ercole de' Roberti. He settled in Florence in 1517 and must have come once more under the influence of Titian, whose early mythologies were painted for Dosso's own patron Alfonso I of Ferrara. There is no evidence that Dosso ever went to Rome, but he was certainly acquainted with Raphael's work by 1520, and the tension of Raphael's later style was the final influence on Dosso. In his later works there is an unearthly light falling on melancholy figures arranged in a romantic dreamland. Dosso was the friend of the great Ferrarese poet Ariosto, who celebrated him in Orlando Furioso as one of the nine greatest living painters; and Dosso's most famous work, The Sorceress Circe (c. 1530; Borghese Gallery, Rome), has been seen as almost an illustration to Ariosto.