Modern scholarship locates Dosso Dossi's birth around 1486 in the province of Mirandola, near Mantua. His actual name was Giovanni Francesco di Luteri. He is first documented as having carried out a large picture commission in 1512. Scholars have suggested that he lived in Venice for some years, before eventually settling in the Emilian town of Ferrara in 1513. Apart from working trips that took him to Venice, Moderna, Mantua, Pesaro, Trent and probably also Rome, Dossi stayed in Ferrara until his death in 1542.

Dossi worked almost exclusively in Ferrara and while the court of Duke Alfonso was an extraordinarily refined and intellectually exciting place, it was also comparatively small...