Allegory of Music

The Allegory of Music, dated around 1530 and held in the Museo Horne in Florence, belongs to Dosso Dossi's extensive engagement with allegorical subjects that combined humanist learning with sensory delight. Music was one of the liberal arts and occupied an important place in Este court culture: Ferrara was a major centre of polyphonic composition, and the Este dukes supported composers and singers alongside visual artists. An allegorical figure of Music would have been entirely appropriate for such a milieu, allowing Dosso to combine the intellectual prestige of humanist iconography with the kind of richly coloured, sensually appealing painting at which he excelled. The Museo Horne, the small museum established by the English art historian Herbert Percy Horne in his Florentine palazzo, holds an eclectic collection of Italian Renaissance works in which this painting represents the Ferrarese contribution.

Dosso constructs the allegory through a female figure with musical instruments or attributes, using the Venetian tradition of the so-called donna ignuda or poetic female to give the abstract concept sensory embodiment. The warm palette and soft modelling of the figure follow Giorgionesque precedents, while the handling of the instruments and any accompanying still-life elements shows the material specificity characteristic of Dosso's approach to allegorical subjects.