From 1514 to his death he was court artist to the EsteDukes of Ferrara and of Modena, whose small court valued its reputation as an artistic centre. He often worked with his younger brother Battista Dossi, who had worked under Raphael. He painted many mythological subjects and allegories with a rather dream-like atmospheres, and often striking disharmonies in colour. His portraits also often show rather unusual poses or expressions for works originating in a court.[3]
Dossi was born in San Giovanni del Dosso, a village in the provinceofMantua. His early training and life are not well documented; his father, originally of Trento, was a bursar (spenditoreorfattore) for the Dukes of Ferrara. He may have had training locally with Lorenzo Costa or in Mantua, where he is known to have been in 1512. By 1514, he would begin three decades of service for dukes Alfonso I and Ercole II d'Este, becoming principal court artist. Dosso worked frequently with his brother Battista Dossi, who had trained in the Roman workshop of Raphael. The works he produced for the dukes included the ephemeral decorations of furniture and theater sets. He is known to have worked alongside il Garofalo in the Costabili polyptych. One of his pupils was Giovanni Francesco Surchi (il Dielai).
Dosso Dossi is known less for his naturalism or attention to design, and more for cryptic allegorical conceits in paintings around mythological themes, a favored subject for the humanist Ferrarese court (see also Cosimo Tura and the decoration of the Palazzo Schifanoia). Dossi employed eccentric distortions of proportion, which may appear caricature-like or even 'primitivist'. The art historian Sydney J. Freedberg sees this characteristic as an expression of the Renaissance aestheticofsprezzatura (i.e. "studied carelessness", or artistic nonchalance). Dossi is also known for the atypical choices of bright pigment for his cabinet pieces. Some of his works, such as the Deposition have lambent qualities that suggest some of Correggio's works. Most of his works feature Christian and Ancient Greek themes and use oil painting as a medium.
The painting Aeneas in the Elysian Fields was part of the Camerino d'AlabastroofAlfonso I in the Este Castle, decorated with canvases depicting bacchanalia and erotic subjects including Feast of the GodsbyGiovanni Bellini and Venus WorshipbyTitian. The frieze paintings were based on the Aeneid; this scene by Dossi is book 6, lines 635–709, wherein Aeneas is guided over the bridge into the Elysian Fields by the Cumaean Sibyl. Orpheus with the lyre flits in the forest; in the background are the ghostly horses of dead warriors.
InHercules and the Pygmies, Hercules has fallen asleep after defeating Antaeus, and is set upon by an army of thumb-size pygmies, whom he defeats. He gathers them in his lion skin. Paintings depicting a powerful Hercules were commonly made for the then-ruler Duke Ercole II d'Este. The subjects of the Mythological Scene and Tubalcain are unknown.
Recently, "Portrait of a Youth" at the National Gallery of Victoria, has been identified by the museum as a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia by Dosso Dossi, having previously been regarded as the portrait of an unknown young male by an unknown painter.[4]
Jupiter Painting Butterflies, Mercury and Virtue, c. 3rd decade of the 16th century, Lanckoroński Collection, Wawel CastlePortrait of Alfonso I d'Este. с. 1530, Galleria Estense, ModenaCirce and her Lovers in a Landscape, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance Art, (2nd edn.)1987, Thames & Hudson (US Harry N Abrams), ISBN0500235104
Gibbons, Felton (1968). Dosso and Battista Dossi; court painters at Ferrara. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
J. Carter Brown (1986). National Gallery of Art (ed.). The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries (First ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 111–128. ISBN978-0521340199.
Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). Pelican History of Art (ed.). Painting in Italy, 1500–1600. pp. 315–322 Penguin Books Ltd.
Ciammitti, Luisa; Ostrow, Steven F.; Settis, Salvatore (1998). Dosso's fate: painting and court culture in Renaissance Italy. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. ISBN0-89236-505-6.
