Melissa

Dosso Dossi painted Melissa around 1520, depicting the enchantress from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso—the sorceress who releases knights from Alcina's spells—in a lush forest setting. The identification of the subject with Ariosto's poem is significant: Dosso worked at the Ferrara court while Ariosto was writing his great chivalric epic, and several of his paintings appear to draw directly on Ariosto's narrative. Melissa stands in a forest glade surrounded by her magical equipment and the evidence of her transformation spells, a beautiful sorceress who uses magic for benevolent rescue rather than malevolent entrapment. Dosso's treatment of the magical landscape—rich, atmospheric, strangely light—creates a world poised between the real and the enchanted that perfectly captures Ariosto's literary tone.

The panel displays Dosso's poetic sensibility with rich atmospheric color and the enigmatic, dreamlike quality that makes his literary subjects among the most evocative paintings of the Italian Renaissance.