Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape

Dosso Dossi painted this around 1525 as court artist to Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, at a court soaked in poetry. The great romance of the day, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, had been written there, full of enchantresses, and that is partly why nobody is quite sure who this woman is. The gallery calls her Circe, the sorceress from Homer who turned men into animals. Others read her as Melissa, a good enchantress from Ariosto who undid such spells. Either way the landscape around her is full of the transformed. Look for a stag, a spoonbill, an owl, and dogs scattered through the trees, once her lovers, while she sits half-clothed holding a tablet covered in signs.