# Witchcraft \(Allegory of Hercules\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [DOSSI, Dosso]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 143 x 144 cm ## Commentary The official painter of the Este court, Dossi painted the family portraits, filled castles with paintings and frescoed villas. This routine, which for other painters might have seemed mortifying, did nothing to extinguish the vivacious and brilliant vein of the artist. Dossi is always consistent. He flushes the flesh tones of his characters with orangy, reddish colours, he places them in risqué situations, with bare-chested women in convivial surroundings and almost obscene merrymaking men with such highly characterized faces that they are almost caricatures. The faces of the women and that of the faun are drawn directly from a cultured classical tradition which is inserted into the Mannerist context. The other characters, emerging from a humid, obscure background, are anything but stereotypes: healthy faces reddened by feasting, grimaces, a variety of attitudes. The only note of light - quite unreal - which stands out from the prevalently ruddy tones, falls directly onto the breasts of the woman holding a bowl of fruit. ## Related artworks - [Aeneas and Achates on the Libyan Coast]() - [Allegory of Music]() - [Anger or the Tussle]() - [Apollo]() - [Bacchus]() - [Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape]() - [Circe \(detail\)]() - [Circe \(or Melissa\)]() - [Diana and Calisto]() - [Francesco Maria della Rovere Leading His Troups]() - [Interior view]() - [Jupiter and Semele]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()