_Dosso Dossi_ (Ferrarese: 1479-1542).
Giovanni di Lutero, who adopted the name of Dosso Dossi,
was the greatest colourist of the Ferrarese School. "His
masterpiece is the great altar picture formerly in the Church
of S. Andrea at Ferrara, but now in the public gallery of that
city, and one of the principal art treasures of Italy. This
sumptuous work, notwithstanding the irreparable injuries it
had sustained from injudicious restorations and repaints, is
still a perfect blaze of colour" (Kugler). The little picture
before us gives an inadequate impression of the painter's
powers. No. 1234 is more characteristic. For Dossi's real bent
lay towards portraiture and romantic subjects. Portraits by
him of the Dukes of Ferrara and of other personages are in the
public gallery at Modena. Of his subject-pictures the "Circe"
of the Borghese Gallery at Rome is the most sumptuous. The
records of Dossi's career are scanty; but his works "point
strongly to two widely different currents of influence, the
one Venetian, the other Ferrarese." He is supposed to have
been for some years at Venice, but to have studied first under
the Ferrarese Lorenzo Costa at Bologna. "His education in art,
the main characteristics of his style, and his long residence
at Ferrara, where he was attached to the court, and where
he chiefly worked, entitle him to a place in the Ferrarese
School.... His colouring is much admired, and justly, for its
force, brilliancy, and novel harmonies: but it would be a
mistake to class it with that of the great Venetian masters
who had a profounder knowledge and a purer ideal of colour"
(Burton). Dossi's romantic genius was no doubt fostered by
his friendship with Ariosto, who celebrated Dosso and his
brother Battista in somewhat exaggerated terms, naming them
in the same breath with Leonardo, Mantegna, Bellini, Michael
Angelo, Raphael, and Titian. "The name of Dosso," says Vasari
ill-naturedly, "had then obtained greater fame from the pen of
Messer Ludovico than from all the pencils and colours consumed
by himself in the whole course of his life." Dosso was highly
favoured, he adds, by Duke Alphonso, of Ferrara, "first because
of his abilities in art, and next on account of his excellent
qualities as a man and the pleasantness of his manners, which
were advantages always highly acceptable to the Duke" (iii.
256). There are many pictures by Dosso in private collections
in England. The exhibition of the Ferrarese School at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1894 included thirteen of them.
He is well represented at Hampton Court. "His works," says
Mary Logan in an interesting appreciation of the painter, "are
distinguished from all Venetian paintings by effects of light
in dreamland rather than in the everyday world (and have in
them) ... a fascinating touch of the bizarre" (Kyrle Society's
_Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court_). Many
pictures passing under other names have been restored to Dosso
by Morelli (see his _Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries_, pp.
214-219).