Print of steel engraving titled „Riposo in Egitto“.

Artist Dosso Dossi.

Drawn by A. Frassinetti.

Engraved by School of Milan (Scuola Milanese).

From “Galerie du Palais Pitti“, Chez Louis Bardi, Florence, 1843. Vol. IV. Tav. 49.

Dosso Dossi (c. 1490 – 1542), real name Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri, was an Italian Renaissance painter who belonged to the Ferrara School of Painting. Dossi was born in San Giovanni del Dosso, a village in the province of Mantua. His early training and life is not well documented; his father, originally of Trento, was a bursar (spenditore or fattore) 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). Freedberg uses the term sprezzatura to refer to the style of Dossi's caricature-like, primitivist, and eccentric distortions of proportion. 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.

Approx. image size: 16, 5 x 13, 2/47, 1 x 32, 2 cm.

Condition: medium.