I would suggest the alternative way for unmasking a circular area of an image. You can specify the clip region - the area where you need to perform painting. For example:
[..]
QPainter painter(this);
// Sample circular area.
QRegion r(QRect(100, 100, 200, 200), QRegion::Ellipse);
painter.setClipRegion(r);
[..]
painter.drawImage(0, 0, image);
[..]
This will draw only those parts of your image that are inside of the circle with radius 200. All the rest pixels will be hidden. You can handle mouse move event to move this "circle" over the image like a loupe.
UPDATE
Below is the sample code that generates an image with circular mask and insert it into the label:
QPixmap target(500, 500); // the size may vary
QPixmap source("image.png");
QPainter painter(&target);
QRegion r(QRect(100, 100, 200, 200), QRegion::Ellipse);
painter.setClipRegion(r);
painter.drawPixmap(0, 0, source);
QLabel l;
l.setPixmap(target);
l.show();