Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape

A beautiful enchantress sits in a deep wood holding a tablet of magic signs, a book of spells open at her feet, encircled by deer, dogs, owls, and a stork - the creatures, by one reading, men she has transformed by her sorcery. She may be Homer's Circe, who turned Odysseus's crew to beasts, or the kindly Melissa of Ariosto's chivalric epic, who undoes such spells; Dosso, steeped in the poetry of the Ferrarese court, leaves it deliberately enchanted and unresolved. The romantic woodland glow is his signature, the same atmosphere as the Apollo and Daphne also in this collection.