His early training and life are not well documented; his father, originally of Trento, was a bursar (spenditore or fattore) for the Dukes of Ferrara.

Dosso Dossi is known less for his naturalism or attention to design, and more for cryptic allegorical conceits in paintings around mythological themes, a favored subject for the humanist Ferrarese court (see also Cosimo Tura and the decoration of the Palazzo Schifanoia).

The art historian Sydney J. Freedberg sees this characteristic as an expression of the Renaissance aesthetic of sprezzatura (i.e. "studied carelessness", or artistic nonchalance).

The painting Aeneas in the Elysian Fields was part of the Camerino d'Alabastro of Alfonso I in the Este Castle, decorated with canvases depicting bacchanalia and erotic subjects including Feast of the Gods by Giovanni Bellini and Venus Worship by Titian.

The frieze paintings were based on the Aeneid; this scene by Dossi is book 6, lines 635–709, wherein Aeneas is guided over the bridge into the Elysian Fields by the Cumaean Sibyl.