DOSS!, DOSSO and G1OBATTISTA, two celebrated Ferrarese painters of the early half of the 16th century. They were born about 1450-1490, in Dosso, near Ferrara. and first entered the school of Lorenzo Costa. after leaving whom they studied together six years in home, and five years in Venice. Though they always worked together, they were constantly disputing: Giobattista, the younger, was deformed, and his disposition was tbo type of his body. Ile had great skill in landscape and in decoration, but no skill in the human figure. DOIISO, on the other hand, was a master in tho figure. They were together employed by Alfonso I. and Ercole 11., dukes of Ferrara; and Giobattista somewhat against his inclination was forced to execute the accessory parts of his brother's pictures.
There are still several of their joint works in or about Ferrara; they made the cartoons of the tapestries in the cathedral of Ferrara, and of those in the pelmets and in San Francesco at Modena, repre senting the deeds of the family of Este, which, according to Vasari, Pordenone was commissioned by Ercole to execute, but he died in l5t0, by poison it is alleged, shortly after his arrival at Ferran for the purpose; Vasari mentions the two Dalai with unjust depredation.
They are praised and enumerated by Arida* among the other great painters of Italy and the immortal artists of Greece ('Or. Fur.' xxxiii. 2.) Dona painted the portrait of Ariosto, and made illustra tion, to the Orlando Furies° ; he painted also the head of Ariosto in a picture of Paradise on the ceiling of the vestibule-of the refectory of the convent of San Benedetto at Ferrara : the portrait is in the possession of the Academy of Sciences of Ferrara, formerly the Academy Degli Intrepidi.
There is a good collection of DONICea oil paintings in the gallery of Dresden, where there are several of his works, the best of which is the four fathers, Saints Gregory, Ambrose, Augustus, and Jerome, disputing on the miraculous conception of the Virgin ; the figures are of the sire of life, but the style has much of the hardness of the early Italian schools. Done survived his brother some years : he died about 1560.
(Frizzi, Goats di Ferrara ; Scoria Piltorica, ac.; Valery, roynges en Italie.) •