Dosso Dossi

This was one of ten paintings by Dosso featuring scenes from Virgil’s Aeneid placed as a frieze above a series of mythologies painted by Titian, Bellini, and Dosso. The earliest direct reference to the Aeneid scenes occurs in a somewhat garbled description by Giorgio Vasari in his Life of Titian (1568):“During the year 1514 Duke Alfonso of Ferrara caused to be decorated a small chamber, for which he commissioned the local painter Dosso to paint various compartments showing the stories of Aeneas, Mars and Venus, and in a grotto Vulcan with two smiths at the forge.”