The High Renaissance
 
&

Mannerism
         

 
Dosso Dossi
 

Dosso Dossi

(b ?Ferrara, c. 1490; d Ferrara, 1541–2).

Although responsive to a wide range of outside influences, the most important of which were probably those of Giorgione in Venice and Raphael in Rome, he was an artist of great originality with a strong feeling for effects of light and colour. Landscape plays a prominent and highly expressive role in his work. He was employed, as were also the poets Matteomaria Boiardo (?1441–94) and Ludovico Ariosto, at the court of Ferrara, which was internationally renowned for its culture, especially its musical life and collections of art: one of his best-known works is an illustration of a magical scene from Ariosto’s poetry, Melissa (1520s; Rome, Gal. Borghese), a painting of opulent colour and texture.

 

Bacchus
c. 1524
Private collection
 

The Virgin Appearing to Sts John the Baptist and John the Evangelist
1520s
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence