Giovanni di Niccolò de Lutero called Dosso Dossi

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a very early lining and stretcher from the same period. The lining canvas is not very strong with a fairly open weave and the stretcher is also quite thin and basic, however the painting has survived remarkably undamaged since relining. However the paint has certainly now become brittle and insecure, with lost flakes across the centre, near the edges and elsewhere. The side edges have quite wide old fillings from the apparently fractured edges of the original paint. This, as well as the very early lining and faint traces of other stretcher bar lines across the centre and along the top but not at the sides, suggests that the painting was cut perhaps on both sides, and reduced from a possibly far larger work. There are various very old tears from the early period before it was cut back, since safely held in place by the relining: one or two above the head of Jove and in his chest and his far arm, on the lower right side there are also brief lines of recent retouching. In some places old broad brush overpainting covers the old tears as well as large stretches of original paint, for instance across Jove’s waist and part of his chest, also his further arm and parts of the upper left sky. While magnificent areas in the lower figure of Jove with his legs and swirling red drapery are perfectly preserved, as is his upper chest, raised arm and his head. Juno is also beautifully intact. Past cleaning left patchy layers of old varnish, for instance Jove’s raised arm is covered in deep brown blotches as his head is also to some extent, while other nearby areas have coherent smooth old brown varnish undisturbed so that the underlying original can be clearly seen. Although the painting apparently went through this turbulent moment in its early life, it seems to have been preserved almost untouched since the very old lining and restoration. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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This recently rediscovered and hitherto unknown work is a characteristic example of Dosso Dossi's work at the height of his career in the 1520s, arguably his most fruitful decade. It is an important and rare addition to the full-scale figure paintings of the protagonist of the High Renaissance at the cosmopolitan court of Ferrara during the reign of Alfonso d'Este (1476-1534). The work displays all of Dosso's charming eccentricities, from his interest in sculptural figures, to the undulation of colourful drapery and his unusual interpretation of iconography.

The musculature and turned pose of Jupiter illustrate Dosso's mastery of and fascination for the human form and can be compared to the Apollo in the Galleria Borghese in Rome (see fig. 1), in which the same plasticity of the figure and a similar approach to foreshortening can be appreciated.¹ Dosso's interest in the nude had become manifest earlier in his career, for example in his Madonna and Child in Glory with Saints John the Baptist, Sebastian and Jerome in the Duomo in Modena.² The saints almost act as bust models in three different poses, as do the male figures in his series of the Learned Men of Antiquity, today scattered in different collections.³ However, the previously stout and thick-set figures of these pictures are treated in a more refined and painterly way in the Apollo and in the present work, with more attention paid to the contours of the sculpted form and the highlights of the hair rather than on mere musculature and shape.

Though the iconography of the painting is not immediately clear - the meaning of the toads, the keys and money bags is as yet unexplained - we can certainly distinguish the male figure as Jupiter, poised to strike with his thunderbolt. It is likely that the female figure should be identified as Semele, one of Jupiter's many mortal lovers. The tale is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 3, verses 287-309: Semele was the daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, whose own sister Europa had also famously been the object of Jupiter's lust. Upon discovering her husband's infidelity, Juno convinced Semele to ask Jupiter to make love to her in his full divine glory. This he reluctantly began to do, surrounded by light and thunder, as can be seen in the present picture, but the might of his power consumed her - a mere mortal - with his lightning. Mercury managed to rescue the unborn child from her womb and placed it in Jupiter's thigh, from which the child, none other than Bacchus-Dionysus, was later born.

The typically idiosyncratic dramatis personae find clear parallels with the enchanting Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue, one of Dosso's mid-career masterpieces from 1524, formerly in the Gemäldegalerie in Vienna and now in the Wawel Royal Castle, Krakow (see fig. 2).⁴ The same model, with his jutting bearded chin, has been used to portray Jupiter, who in the Krakow work is shown clothed, with paint brush in hand and his thunderbolt at rest by his feet. The distinctive physiognomy of Semele is a topos of Dosso's style, and it is often the women in his paintings who convey the emotional charge of the scene: her left hand is held to her breast in supplication or fear in the same way in both the present and Krakow paintings. Both women wear the same golden robes, which glisten in the light and are cut through by shadows, while the delicate details of the hair vary. A comparable work from this period is the Sibyl in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (see fig. 3).⁵ Her hair is neatly arranged in a similar coiffure as in the present work, and the strong bridge of her nose is clearly defined by the use of shadow; a similar female face with immaculate hair is that of the Madonna in the Holy Family in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome.⁶

Though of different subject matter, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the present work may have formed part of the same narrative cycle dedicated to Jupiter as the Krakow painting. Perhaps Jupiter's catastrophic encounter with Semele came after the Krakow painting: his red robes have now fallen off his shoulders on to his leg, just covering his modesty, while behind him the calm rainbow has been transformed into a leaden sky. There are obvious problems in associating the two pictures as part of the same narrative cycle, not least the fact that the Vienna painting is horizontal while the present work is vertical, but they can certainly be considered thematically related, painted in the same spirit and at the same moment in his career. There are in fact other examples of narrative series by Dosso in which individual paintings are produced in differing formats, for example the aforementioned series of the Learned Men of Classical Antiquity. Three of the remaining five paintings in the set are vertical while two others are horizontal, and despite having been reduced in size they were most likely conceived in their present formats.

While the painting may have been reduced by a few centimetres along the right edge, it is unlikely to be a fragment of a larger composition. The already large dimensions exclude that the canvas extended significantly to the right and while the design is unusual, it is certainly coherent, all the more so if it did originally form part of a larger series depicting the capricious activities of the Olympian gods. Just as in the Learned Men series, that which is absent from the picture is Dosso's fascination in landscape, a feature which he had picked up from Giorgione. Instead, in keeping with Ovid's tale, Dosso has chosen a most original background composed of moody clouds which envelop the characters, and rays of sunlight which break through from behind and match the glow of the highlights in Semele's hair, her shawl, Jupiter's sandals and the golden tassels which hang from the hem of his red robe.

We are grateful to Professor Peter Humfrey for endorsing the attribution and for proposing a date of execution of 1520-25, following first-hand inspection. Professor Alessandro Ballarin, to whom we are also grateful, proposes a similar date of execution. While Professor Ballarin has endorsed the attribution and praised the high quality of the work on the basis of photographs, he prefers to withhold final judgement until the painting has been cleaned.


1. See A. Ballarin, Dosso Dossi, La pittura a Ferrara negli anni del ducato di Alfonso I, Padua 1995, vol. I, pp. 343-34, cat. no. 442, reproduced vol. II, fig. 713.
2. Idem, pp. 332-33, cat. no 422, reproduced in colour plates CLXIV-CLXVI.
3. Idem, pp. 44-45, 79-80, 323-24, cat. nos. 406-410, reproduced in colour plates CLVIII-CLX and in vol. II, figs. 599 and 606.
4. Idem, pp. 339-40, cat. no. 433, reproduced in colour plate CLXXV.
5. Idem, pp. 95, 341, cat. no. 438, reproduced vol. II, fig. 710.
6. Idem, pp. 346-47, cat. no. 447, reproduced vol. II, fig. 740.