Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape

The sorceress Circe is represented crowned with flowers, half sitting, half standing, to left beneath a group of trees, and nude except for green drapery that falls over her left leg; she points to a stone tablet of laws held with her left arm.[1] Around are her lovers changed to birds and beasts, a greyhound, a white puppy, a stag with horns in the velvet, a hawk, an owl, two lions, and a spoonbill.[1] Her familiar hind stands before her, and at her feet is an open book of spells.[1] Wooded landscape and buildings to the left, against a horizon flushed with light and blue sky.[1]

Circe (detail)

According to Robert Henry Benson, this is probably an early work painted under the inspiration of Giorgione and Titian.[1] The same critic notes that the choice and treatment of the subject suggest a sense of humour in Dossi.[1]

• Benson, Robert Henry (1914). Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16 South Street, Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex. London: Chiswick Press. pp. 115–116, no. 60.

• Cairns, Huntington; Walker, John, eds. (1944). Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York: Random House. pp. 72–73.
• Cairns, Huntington; Walker, John, eds. (1966). A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan. p. 164.
• Shapley, Fern Rusk (1968). Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV–XVI Century. London: Phaidon Press. p. 73, fig. 176.
• Shapiro, Maurice L. (1974). "The Widener Orpheus". Studies in the History of Art, 6. pp. 24–25, 28.
• Walker, John (1963). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. pp. 136, 140.
• "Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape, c. 1525". National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 29 October 2022.