LOTTO, Lorenzo

A young woman is seated on a grassy bank beside a pool of water. In the sky above her, a winged putto scatters small white flowers in her lap. In the lower right corner, a satyr reclines, pouring wine from a jar into his mouth, while opposite him a female satyr observes the scene. Behind a grove of trees the sun rises or sets over a distant mountain range.

Like Lotto’s other Allegory, which served as a cover for his portrait of Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi, this panel may once have performed an analogous function. It is assumed by some scholars that probably it was the cover for the Portrait of a Lady in Dijon.

This devotional image was probably painted for the wall of a private palace. The family resemblance between the physiognomically particularized shepherds suggests that they constitute donor portraits of brothers.

The painting is signed but not dated. It is close stylistically to the Annunciation in Recanati and is usually dated to 1527-28. However, recently a later date (c. 1534) was proposed for both paintings.

In the sky above the young woman, a winged putto scatters small white flowers in her lap.

Lotto’s beginnigs were probably with Bellini, but by 1505 he already showed astonishing originality. This small allegorical scene, which originally served as a hinged panel covering a portrait of Bernardo de’ Rossi, Bishop of Treviso (now in the Naples Museum), is comparable in its scale and strangeness of mood to the ‘poesie’ of Giorgione and may even anticipate them in date.

The churchman’s shield facing to the left signifies that during his life he chose the narrow path of learning and virtue symbolized by the child with instruments indicating learning. In contrast, on the right, are symbolized disaster and dissipation in the shipwreck, storm, and wine-loving satyr.

On the right are symbolized disaster and dissipation in the shipwreck, storm, and wine-loving satyr.

The Angel and the Virgin of the Annunciation are the two upper panels of the polyptych executed by Lotto for the small village Ponteranica in a valley north of Bergamo. The other panels were probably partly completed by assistants, while the protagonists of the Annunciation are among the most fascinating images of Lotto’s maturity. Lotto, who was very fond of the theme of the announcement that Mary was to give birth to the son of God, presented the episode in various ways. Here the evocation of the iridescent, almost incorporeal angel confers a dream-like fascination on the event, which is, however, placed on a plane of worldly normality by the Virgin’s gesture and expression.

The angel in the upper left compartment of the polyptych is one of the most lyric creations of Lotto.

This painting was part of a now dismantled altar.

This odd and unusual Annunciation scene takes place in Mary’s chamber, represented with fidelity to detail yet lighted in surprising way, even from below. Mary has been reading at a prie-dieu when God the Father burst in from the loggia, stretching forth his hands as if sending down the dove of the Holy Spirit, although no dove is seen. Gabriel runs in from the door bearing a huge lily and drops suddenly to one knee. Mary turns toward us and opens her hands in wonder. A cat scurries away in terror, casting a shadow on the floor, as does the rushing angel.

The Recanati Annunciation is one of Lotto’s best-loved works, above all for its refreshingly original and unrhetorical treatment of a very familiar theme. The holy figures are represented in a way that is touchingly direct, almost naive, and the scene is lent a further immediacy by the detailed description of the Virgin’s bedchamber and garden beyond and by the quasi-humorous prominence of the frightened cat.

The painting was executed for the oratory of Santa Maria sopra Mercanti, where it remained until 1953, when it was transferred to the museum. The artist had already returned to Venice when he executed this agitated, very personal interpretation of the theme. Although the painting is generally dated to the late 1520s, recently it was proposed from stylistic considerations that it dates from soon after Lotto’s return to the Marches in 1533.

This odd and unusual Annunciation scene takes place in Mary’s chamber, represented with fidelity to detail yet lighted in surprising way, even from below. Mary has been reading at a prie-dieu when God the Father burst in from the loggia. She turn toward us and opens her hands in wonder. A cat scurries away in terror, casting a shadow on the floor, as does the rushing angel.

Gabriel runs in from the door bearing a huge lily and drops suddenly to one knee.

The identity of the sitter is debated. One of the assumptions is that the painting represents Sansovino, Lotto’s friend between 1527 and 1529.

The subject of this painting has sometimes been interpreted as the appearance of the Virgin to Sts Anthony Abbot and Louis of Toulouse in order to explain the clear psychological difference between the figure of the Virgin, motionless and absorbed and the emotional warmth of the saints.

In 1549 Lotto won the commission to paint a huge Assumption of the Virgin for San Francesco alle Scale in Ancona and left Venice to execute the picture on the spot. Although he went intending to return after its completion, the award of a number of other local commission must have made him rethink his position. He was never to see his native city again.

The colours of this altarpiece are less lively than the usual and the play of light and shadows gives the painting a definitely melancholic aspect.

The bishop, who was the leading figure of the cultural life of Treviso and the “discoverer” of Lotto, is portrayed as he makes a restrained gesture of intense energy. The plastic structure of the portrait conveys an idea of a strong, almost aggressive physical presence. Moreover, the careful rendering of the smallest details of his appearance emphasizes the moral stature of the cultured prelate.

The painted cover of the portrait, representing an allegorical scene, is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

In Venice, Lotto produced a series of brilliant portraits in which the depth of psychological exploration was unprecedented and the originality of conception, style, and deployment of pictorial resources was unsurpassed. The e portrait of Bishop Tommaso Negri belongs to this group, together with the Portrait of Andrea Odoni, the Portrait of a Young Man, and the Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia.

The composition was inspired by D�rer. The painting is signed and dated on the cross.

Lotto’s painting is one of the most brilliant examples of a theme that deeply engaged his contemporaries in both Lombardy and Venice. In these works, the focus is generally on Christ’s head and shoulders pressed close to the picture plane, as he struggles with the cross and is beset by violent figures.

One of the masterpieces of Lorenzo Lotto, anticipating the successive Lombardian painting of the 16th century. The painting was probably commissioned by the Tassi family in Bergamo and the kneeling woman at the right was identified as Elisabetta Rota, wife of Domenico Tassi.

Lotto never accepted the material and secular values of painting in his native city of Venice and the Christ Taking Leave of his Mother shows how he used ambiguities of space and scale to heighten the religious and visionary effects of his paintings. At the same time he was capable of great intensity of observation, and his works often include passages of detail.

The theme of this painting was widespread in votive images, especially in the Northern Italian painting. The earliest record of this composition is to be found in the expense accounts of Lorenzo Lotto, who in 1542 bought a plaster cast which he apparently put up as a private altar flanked by two statuettes representing true faith and heresy. Shortly afterwards, Lotto used the composition in the present painting, documented in 1543.

This is one of the three predella paintings of the altarpiece Lotto painted for the Dominican church of Santo Stefano in Bergamo between 1513 and 1516. The central panel is now in the church of San Bartolomeo in Bergamo.

The painting was commissioned for the church of San Flaviano by the Minorite Order. It is an homage to Raphael, to his Entombment of 1507 (now in the Galleria Borghese, Rome).

This is one of Lotto’s last portraits. The exceptional devotional power of the friar is expressed by means of a broken up surface, with a limited range of colours. The appearance of the Crucifixion, on the left, takes on the aspect of a visionary evocation, perhaps under the influence of northern European painting. It recalls the compositions of Matthias Gr�newald.

A fine youthful work but partially repainted. It was done under the influence of D�rer and Jacopo de’ Barbari. It is small, but life-size. Even in this work from his earliest period, the sitter’s fully frontal posture is characteristic of Lotto’s portraits, and so is the lively sense of personality that emerges from the close-up.

In the 18th-century inventories the painting appeared as the portrait of Raphael, executed by Leonardo da Vinci, an assumption based on the soft, atmospheric modeling, the intense psychological penetration, and the traditional iconography of Raphael, who had always been seen as a delicate, elegant and refined youth. Recent X-rays, however, have revealed a previous portrait, completely different the one executed.

This painting is a variation on the traditional Venetian pictorial type representing the Virgin and Child with saints in a landscape. The idyllic group comprises the Virgin and the Christ child, Joseph (at the left), the child John the Baptist, his mother Elizabeth (the Virgin’s elder sister) and his father Zacharias (at the right). It was painted in the Marches, probably for a local patron, but for some reason it remained in Lotto’s possession. He left the painting to the religious community in Loreto after his death.

The painting is one of the first works completed a few months after Lorenzo Lotto arrived in the Marches.

Inside the Virgin’s bedroom, the holy figures are shown in a direct, touching manner, following an original approach introduced by Flemish painters, and one that is similar to the artist’s other painting from the same period, such as the Annunciation in Recanati.

The canvas stands out for its originality, also from an iconographic viewpoint: St Anne is leaning against the step on a four-poster bed, with her legs open with the Virgin and the Baby Jesus between them, singularly and vividly representing in this manner, the concept of their descending from her womb. The presence of St Jerome, on the left, pointing to the Holy Family with his open hand, may be a reference to the person who commissioned the work, named Jerome.

The range of acid colours, the gradation of cold light and the lack of contrast in the shadows confirm the characteristics of Lotto’s works in that period, including the Holy Family with St Catherine of Alexandria at the Carrara Academy of Bergamo, which is signed and dated 1533.

This painting comes from the famous collection of Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany and on the right side, at the base of the cushion on which St Anne and the Virgin Mary are seated, it is signed: “Lorenzo Loto 1534”. A version of the painting (painted in collaboration with his workshop) is in the Courtauld Gallery in London. It is completely similar to the present work except for the presence of an area of scenery in place of St Jerome.

This small, dramatic painting may have been made for a sophisticated Roman patron. The source for the figure grouping was Mantegna who produced numerous versions of the subject in different media, which in turn inspired engravings (e.g. by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, formerly called Zoan Andrea).

The story of St Barbara begins at the far left, where Barbara, recognizable by her blue dress and yellow cloak, is imprisoned in a tower by her pagan father.

The detail shows St. Barbara chased into the fields.

This detail shows St Barbara fleeing from her father into the forest.

The detail shows the scenes of torture and martyrdom.

The detail shows the scenes of martyrdom.

The iconographic program of the north wall, uninterrupted by door or windows is more complex and embraces two distinct themes. The centre of the wall is dominated by the huge figure of Christ as the Vine, a literal representation of Christ’s words in John 15:5: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” The figure of Christ, with the praying figures of Battista Suardi, his wife, and sister at his feet is presented as the trunk of the vine, and the branches sprout out of his upturned fingers. The branches then curl into circles, forming natural counterparts to the roundels on the south and west walls, and likewise containing half-length figures, this time of saints. Sprouting leaves and bunches of grapes, the branches extend into the gable of the west wall and across the ceiling to form a fictive bower, filled with clambering putti. At either side of the composition are ladders placed against the branches of the vine, and two groups of early Christian heretics, duly labeled with their names, are attempting to climb to join the Elect. But two of the church fathers, Jerome and Ambrose, resist their advance and send them tumbling down beyond the confines of the fresco into an unseen pit of perdition.

The second theme of the north wall, portrayed on a much smaller scale in the background and middle-ground landscape and buildings, concerns the life of St Barbara, cotitular with St Brigid of the oratory. The story is taken from the Golden Legend, and like so many of the saints’ lives retold in this popular compendium, it concerns the many trials and tribulations courageously suffered in Christ’s name by one of his martyrs. It begins at the far left, where Barbara, recognizable by her blue dress and yellow cloak, is imprisoned in a tower by her pagan father. The story then unfolds from left to right, following a meandering course as Barbara is chased into the fields, arrested, forced to undergo a succession of cruel tortures, and finally beheaded. In one of the last episodes Barbara’s father, the chief author of her persecution, is struck dead by a thunderbolt, a reminder that one of Barbara’s most characteristic powers was to defend her devotees and their possessions from unexpected catastrophe.

The detail shows the Miracle of the Garb. The narrative of the deeds of Brigid begins next to the apse with her entry into the order. During the ceremony of assuming her garb before the altar, the wood on the altar steps begins to sprout new growth when Brigid touches it. Portraits of the Suardi family appear as witnesses of the miracle.

An apparent gap in the wall offers a view of Brigid distributing alms in the form of food.

The detail shows the Miracle of the Garb. The narrative of the deeds of Brigid begins next to the apse with her entry into the order. During the ceremony of assuming her garb before the altar, the wood on the altar steps begins to sprout new growth when Brigid touches it. Portraits of the Suardi family appear as witnesses of the miracle.

An apparent gap in the wall offers a view of Brigid distributing alms in the form of food.

The various narrative scenes on the long entrance wall (the south wall), depicted on a large scale in the foreground and a small scale in the landscape beyond, represent episodes from the life of St Brigid, an Irish nun venerated for her charitable activity on behalf of the poor and sick and, most appropriate in the context of the rural community of Trescore, as a protector of crops and farm animals against natural disasters. Thus, in the central section next to and above the doorway, the saint in her distinctive yellow habit is presented four times: in the left foreground she gives food (raw meat, which miraculously has failed to mark her habit) and drink (water miraculously transformed into beer) to two peasant women; to the right, she heals a blind man; in the left background she saves a flock of sheep from a wild boar; and in the right background she halts the advance of a devastating storm.

In one of the background scenes St Brigid tames a boar that is threatening a shepherd and his sheep, which then peacefully joins the herd of sheep.

The detail shows St Brigid averting a storm. The fowler in the foreground may be Lorenzo Lotto’s self-portrait.

The various narrative scenes on the long entrance wall (the south wall), depicted on a large scale in the foreground and a small scale in the landscape beyond, represent episodes from the life of St Brigid, an Irish nun venerated for her charitable activity on behalf of the poor and sick and, most appropriate in the context of the rural community of Trescore, as a protector of crops and farm animals against natural disasters. Thus, in the central section next to and above the doorway, the saint in her distinctive yellow habit is presented four times: in the left foreground she gives food (raw meat, which miraculously has failed to mark her habit) and drink (water miraculously transformed into beer) to two peasant women; to the right, she heals a blind man; in the left background she saves a flock of sheep from a wild boar; and in the right background she halts the advance of a devastating storm.

The represented saints are Jerome, Peter, Clare and Francis. The painting shows the influence of Giovanni Bellini and Albrecht D�rer.

In this Sacra Conversazione, Lotto adopted a compositional type familiar in the work of Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, consisting of the slightly elevated Virgin and Child flanked by two pairs of saints. But whereas Bellini’s three-quarter-length figures are typically detached from each other and from the viewer, as if lost in meditation, Lotto chose to depict a real colloquy. He activates the static Bellinesque formula by having the Child scrutinize the scroll held up to him by the aged Jerome and by representing the Virgin in dialogue with St Francis, as she reacts to the stigmata that he displays.

This painting shows the influence of Palma Vecchio. In the 15th century Venetian painting Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina developed the perfect and much followed type of the subject of Madonna with a group of saints. The group was alway composed symmetrically in an architectural setting. At the beginning of the next century this composition scheme was loosened and the group was frequently set in a landscape.

The represented saints are Catherine of Alexandria and Thomas. The latter is usually called James the Greater, whose attribute is a pilgrim’s staff. However, the object depicted is a spear, therefore the saint must be the apostle Thomas. Indeed, he was identified as such in a catalogue of the Austrian imperial collection of 1783.

The detail shows the angel.

In the Madonna and Child with St Ignatius of Antioch and St Onophrius, 1508, the young Lorenzo Lotto is influenced by D�rer, who when in Venice in 1506 had painted sacred paintings of great chromatic intensity and asymmetrical composition. Lotto’s wild St Onophrius is based on the man with the long beard in D�rer’s Christ among the Doctors (now in Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid).

Not only is the figure of St Onophrius a precise citation from D�rer’s painting Christ among the Doctors, but the whole of the work shows D�rer’s influence in the accentuated hardness of the outlines and the cold but almost glittering tones of the colours.

Lorenzo Lotto’s popularity has experienced a revival in recent years, perhaps because of an inherent proto-surrealism which calls to mind modern artists. In this painting St Peter Martyr, represented as unusually frail with a large knife firmly embedded in his skull, presents to the Virgin and Child not a donor as Lotto painted it originally, but a young St John the Baptist, which is a feebly painted later addition.

The painting is the central panel of the Recanati Polyptych. The painter was commissioned by the Dominican friars at Recanati in 1506 to execute the polyptych consisting of six compartments. This structure (Sts Thomas Aquinas and Flavian at the left wing, Sts Peter the Martyr and Vitus at the right wing, Sts Lucy and Vincent Ferrer, the Pietà, and Sts Catherine of Siena and Sigismund at the upper part) is essentially Quattrocento in spirit.

Lorenzo Lotto was probably trained in the Bellini workshop and his early works are strongly Bellinesque. This painting is an illustration of Lotto’s early period. The picture is suffused with light, and in particular with light reflected from the vaulting of the loggia which shelters the group of Madonna and Child with attendant saints and angels from the brilliant sun outside.

This small devotional painting is virtually identical in style to the Recanati polyptych, the culminating masterpiece of Lotto’s early period. It translates the formal and expressive language of the polyptych into the category of small works made for private devotion.

The painting is signed on the stone base: L. LO[T]US.

The Santa Cristina al Tiverone Altarpiece, a Sacra Conversazione, is the most important work of Lotto’s Treviso period. Its composition shows the knowledge of Giovanni Bellini’s San Zaccaria Altarpiece.

In contrast with the growing use of tonal gradation of light, which was particularly widespread in the province where Giorgione was born, Lotto seemed to wish to return to northern inspiration. Thus the strong, incisive line, the clear light and the severe expression of the figures match a compositional structure that was apparently traditional, but was, in fact, already affected by a feeling of unrest.

The lunette represents the Dead Christ Surrounded by two Angels. The expressive power of it is noteworthy. The realism of this painting anticipates that of Caravaggio a century later.

The detail shows Sts Peter and Christine.

The saints at the left side are Dominic, Magdalene, Thomas Aquinas; at the right Clare, Peter the Martyr, Esperance. The 15 tondos in the background represent scenes of the life of Christ, they are (from the bottom left) the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Circumcision, Jesus among the Doctors, Agony in the Garden, Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, Road to Calvary, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, Assumption, Coronation of the Virgin.

According to the tradition, the donator was Sperandia Franceschini Simonetti, the wife of Dario Franceschini, Lotto’s friend at Cingoli. It is not known whether Lotto executed the painting in the Marches where he stayed in November 1538, or in Venice where he is documented in January 1540.

Like Lorenzo Lotto’s Young Man before a White Curtain, this pale, elegantly dressed, bearded man is shown before a curtain, only this time the curtain is a deep, dark red. It fills almost half of the painting, its fall broken by a green table, upon which the man leaning across into the picture space rests his elbow. It is the man’s pose which lends such unease to the composition. Unlike the enduring quality imparted by the statuesque tranquility of Lotto’s Young Man, the almost diagonal pose of this sitter suggests transience, a fleeting revelation, an impression intensified by the questing eyes of the sitter and his stangely mute gestures.

Whereas the hand on his chest may be interpreted as a sign of “sincerità” - reverence, or protestation (as when one crosses one’s heart, or in the expression “mano sul cuore”) - the stretched out left hand holding the golden paw presents us with a problem. It is difficult not to notice a latent aggression in the spread claw, which appears to be leaping from the man’s grasp. Placed as it is, a little right of centre, this detail attracts more attention than its small size would initially seem to warrant, an effect underlined by the gleaming brightness of the wrought gold against the black sheen of the man’s coat. There can be little doubt that the claw is central to the meaning of the painting. But how should it be understood? Is it intended as an attribute referring to the sitter’s profession or social role? If so, then the sitter may be a sculptor or goldsmith, and the paw possibly an allusion to his name. The lion’s paw might then stand for Leone Leoni (c. 1509-1590); a medallist himself, Leoni was naturally interested in “impresa”, emblems and all kinds of allusions to names, and, for obvious enough reasons, chose the lion’s paw as his own heraldic device. Leoni stayed at Venice in 1527 while Lotto was living there. However, these speculations amount to no more than a vague hypothesis, and unless more light is thrown on the origin of the painting, there seems little prospect of ever identifying the man.

Attribution and dating can be traced back to Giovanni Morelli, whose method - attribution on the basis of details otherwise considered secondary (e.g. the depiction of the sitter’s ears or fingers), but thought to remain constant throughout an artist’s “oeuvre” - cannot be allowed to pass unquestioned.

It is not unthinkable that the paw, or claw, may be an obscure reference to some Latin phrase which, in this context, would have the force of a motto. The motto might be “ex ungue leonem” (to recognize “the lion by its paw”), a synechoche employed by Classical writers, for example Plutarch and Lucian, to refer - by metonymy - to a painter’s brushwork or signature, or “hand” in sculpture, which immediately identifies the work of a particular master. This interpretation of the paw would, of course, be in keeping with the suggestion that it represents a professional attribute.

A conclusive interpretation of this painting is not possible. The historical and aesthetic conditions of the painting’s conception and execution evidently precluded access to its meanings by more than a limited circle of Lotto’s contemporaries, a problem that makes the painting virtually impossible to decipher today. The precept of “dissimulatio”, the demand - frequently voiced in the increasingly popular moralizing literature of the day - that the sitter’s inward world remain concealed, or veiled, seems to have influenced its conception. The painting shows a new page turning in the history of the mind, a new stage of awareness of subjectivity and individuality. Here was a dialectical response to a feeling that the self had become all too transparent, all too vulnerable, an example of the new tactics required by the self-assertive individual in contemporary social hierarchies.

The stretched out left hand holding the golden paw presents us with a problem. It is difficult not to notice a latent aggression in the spread claw, which appears to be leaping from the man’s grasp. Placed as it is, a little right of centre, this detail attracts more attention than its small size would initially seem to warrant, an effect underlined by the gleaming brightness of the wrought gold against the black sheen of the man’s coat. There can be little doubt that the claw is central to the meaning of the painting. But how should it be understood? Is it intended as an attribute referring to the sitter’s profession or social role? If so, then the sitter may be a sculptor or goldsmith, and the paw possibly an allusion to his name.

The painter depicts the couple with a Cupid placing a yoke on their shoulders, a clear reference to the duties that each party undertakes in marriage. Lotto’s source for the Cupid may have been a Roman stele that he could have seen while in Rome between 1519 and 1511. The stele was thought to represent the god Fidio, protector of truth; the image showed a man and a woman with right hands united, and behind and between them a young boy.

Stylistically, this composition is related to German models, showing Lotto’s vivid interest in art beyond the Alps.

The saints surrounding the Madonna are Jerome, George, Sebastian (at the left), Catherine, Anthony the Abbot, Nicholas of Bari (at the right).

Lotto executed this painting in Bergamo for Marsilio Cassotti, signing it on the step of the throne in an inscription that reads “Laur.tus Lotus 1524”. It was part of the collection housed at the Quirinal Palace, where it was noted by Cavalcaselle and Morelli, up until around 1912 when it passed to the Galleria Corsini. Within Lotto’s career, this picture belongs to the last part of the period that he spent working in Bergamo. A direct comparison can be made with the almost contemporary Mystic Marriage of St Catherine at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, a picture signed and dated to 1523. In both works Lotto attains a compositional equilibrium through the interlinking of the figures. In the picture in Rome, the circular motion around the fulcrum of the Madonna is also underscored by seemingly improvisational light reflections which form a pattern of diffusion that centres on the figure of the Virgin.

The medallion hanging from Saint Catherine’s belt is typical of Lotto’s world of emblematic symbols. Its winged putto is a recurring motif in the artist’s work. Lotto employed a similar putto in his 1525 inlay designs for the steps of the choir entrance at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, accompanied by the motto “Nosce te ipsum”. The motif and motto appear again in Lotto’s portrait of an anonymous Thirty-seven year old man (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome), though without the same degree of detail evident in the Mystic Marriage. The theme of wisdom and justice, symbolically communicated by the putto with his feet resting on a balance, is well adapted to this learned saint. Catherine is also portrayed with a richness of clothing and jewels which, though normal to her iconography, are distinctive in the refined attention with which the artist treats them. Lotto generally requested additional compensation for such intricate work.

The detail shows St Catherine. The medallion hanging from thee saint’s belt is typical of Lotto’s world of emblematic symbols. Its winged putto is a recurring motif in the artist’s work. Lotto employed a similar putto in his 1525 inlay designs for the steps of the choir entrance at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, accompanied by the motto “Nosce te ipsum”. The motif and motto appear again in Lotto’s portrait of an anonymous Thirty-seven year old man (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome), though without the same degree of detail evident in the Mystic Marriage. The theme of wisdom and justice, symbolically communicated by the putto with his feet resting on a balance, is well adapted to this learned saint. Catherine is also portrayed with a richness of clothing and jewels which, though normal to her iconography, are distinctive in the refined attention with which the artist treats them.

The pastoral mood, asymmetrical design, and complex spatial arrangements are typical Venetian variants on a traditional theme. Most unusual are the crucifix behind, and the mousetrap, on which the artist has signed his name in the lower right corner. The crucifix is a late - possibly much later - addition by Lotto. The idea of concentrating in one image the initial (the Nativity) and final (the Crucifixion) moment of the Redemption seems to derive from Venetian ideas.

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This altarpiece is the most important surviving example of a number of works Lotto is known to have painted for churches in and around Treviso during his second period of residence in Treviso (1542-45). It was commissioned by the prioress of the Dominican nunnery of San Paolo. The church of San Paolo, destroyed after the suppression of the nunnery in 1810, had three chapels at the east end, the Pietà was placed in the chapel to the left of the high altar.

The Pietà is characterized by a mood of profound melancholy, expressed both by the anguished facial expression and by the encircling darkness. The painting is reminiscent of Botticelli’s Lamentation, a painting that Lotto could have seen thirty years earlier in Florence, and it may have been responding to one of the most important examples of central Italian Mannerism seen in Venice, Salviati’s Lamentation painted during 1539-41.

A characteristic feature of the painting is the motif of the Virgin falling into a deathly swoon. This motif was probably requested by the prioress and her theological adviser.

The humanist and antique dealer Andrea Odoni is presented amidst his collection of antiques. He sits at a green-covered table, wearing a voluminous and richly lined, fur-collared coat. His large head, inclined a little to one side, is framed by his beard, and by his dark hair, which is parted in the middle. Gazing at the spectator, Odoni has placed one hand on his chest in a gesture of “sincerità” (here: reverence, or deference), while his other holds out a small, possibly Egyptian statue to the spectator. By contrast with the room in Titian’s portrait of Jacopo de Strada, Odoni’s antique cabinet is simply furnished. Against the whitewashed wall, the statues seem to have developed a fantastic life of their own, especially on the right where the shadows are deeper. Antaeus is shown wrestling with Hercules on the left, while a statue on the right, from the Vatican Belvedere court, shows Hercules with the skin of the Nemean lion. On the far right there is yet another Hercules, a “Hercules mingens” (the Classical hero as “Manneken Pis”), before a well, or trough, over which a female figure, perhaps Venus, is leaning.

Classical antiquity seems revived in the form of a huge head emerging from under the table-cloth. In fact, this is the head of Emperor Hadrian, the “Adrian de stucco” mentioned by Marcantonio Michiel in 1555 in his Odoni-collection inventory. The much smaller torso of Venus appears to nestle up to the head, to - probably calculated - comic effect. Although monochromatic, and indeed partly ruined, the sculptures seem mysteriously animated. Lotto invokes the magical properties of the image; he gently parodies the theme of the “re-birth” of Classical art by taking it literally.

The small statue in the collector’s hand, reminiscent of Diana of Ephesus, indicates the artist’s and sitter’s demonstrable interest in Egyptian religion. At Venice, Lorenzo Lotto’s place of birth, where he often stayed - the painting was executed after 1526, while Lotto was staying at Venice - there was widespread interest among the humanists in Egyptian hieroglyphics as a source of arcane knowledge and divine wisdom. This “science” could be traced back to Horapollo, the author of a treatise on hieroglyphics, which had survived in Greek translation.

On the far right there is yet another Hercules, a “Hercules mingens” (the Classical hero as “Manneken Pis”), before a well, or trough, over which a female figure, perhaps Venus, is leaning.

The portraits of Laura da Pola and Febo da Brescia belong to the period in his career when Lotto was particularly active as a portraitist. Both paintings are signed and dated 1544. They were identified by Berenson as works of Lotto from the artist’s account book.

Rather than painting monarchs and prelates, as did Titian, Lotto portrayed the local nobility, fixing their traits with an acute eye. There is no rhetorical decorative detail but only the existential truth of the subject.

The sitters’ families, originally from Brescia and Pola, respectively, had settled in Treviso in the fourteenth century, and by the early fifteenth were counted among the wealthiest in the city. Febo Bettignoli da Bressa was born in 1524 and died violently in 1547, perhaps in battle. Lauara da Pola, much younger than her husband, was born in 1524 and died in 1596. In the portraits Lotto endows the Trevigian couple with markedly aristocratic air. He adopted a format and approach close to those customarily employed by Titian for his own high-ranking sitters: vertical field; planar poses; relatively neutral background; restriction of the accessories to a few.

The portraits of Laura da Pola and Febo da Brescia belong to the period in his career when Lotto was particularly active as a portraitist. Both paintings are signed and dated 1544. They were identified by Berenson as works of Lotto from the artist’s account book.

Rather than painting monarchs and prelates, as did Titian, Lotto portrayed the local nobility, fixing their traits with an acute eye. There is no rhetorical decorative detail but only the existential truth of the subject.

The handling of the paint, especially in the Portrait of Laura da Pola, is Titianesque in the brushwork, the broad and uneven strokes and the warm tonality. The register is kept predominantly low, however, and is almost monotonous in the costume and the background, except for the warm rays of the velvet chair and the explosive colour of the fan. The abstract oval of the face, framed by the regular coiffure and headdress, is reminiscent of the Tuscan tradition. Laura da Pola is shown with a pensive expression, emphasized by the refined rendering of the details of her attire.

In this nocturnal portrait the pale moonlight laps the edges of the clouds and just barely mists the shores. Plump and self-confident, the Bergamasque noblewoman stands out with vibrating luminosity against the dark background. In this portrait Lotto mixes various features, namely the sense of belonging to the peaceful life of Bergamo, the ability to depict the sitters extremely vividly and the fondness for plays on words. In fact, the lady’s name is concealed in a rebus: in the moon (luna in Italian) on the left the letters CI appear, thus form Lu-ci-na.

The melancholy Portrait of a Man by Lorenzo Lotto is probably the portrait of the widower, Mercurio Bua, because of the small skull surrounded by rose petals, reminiscent of a fatal confinement. Mercurio Bua was an Albanian condottiere in the service of the Venetian government

It is assumed by some scholars that the painting represents the self-portrait of the artist, however, this identification is not generally accepted.

Coming originally from Bergamo, Lorenzo Lotto soon abandoned Venice in search of fresh artistic experience in other cities of the Veneto, in Lombardy, Rome and the Marches. He was influenced for example by Antonello da Messina, Melozzo, D�rer, Raphael and Titian. In particular after his meditation on Lombard realism Lotto’s painting, which never lent itself easily to rules of any kind, established an individual style based on a refined tension of compositional rhythms, a subtly natural light and a gentle blending of colours. Lotto’s portraits achieve an extraordinary poetic quality and have a subtly autobiographical flavour about them with the at once melancholy and dreamy atmosphere which the subjects inhabit. One of the very finest of Lotto’s portraits is this Young Gentleman in his Study.

The pale young man with his finely tapered face, is obviously a lover of both music and hunting, witness the mandola and the hunting horn hanging from the piece of furniture on the right, and is caught here in a moment of yearning thoughtfulness as his fingers leaf absent-mindedly through the pages of a large book. The natural light, entering through an invisible window, highlights the vibrant blacks and greys of his garments, the pale pink tones of his flesh and the blues of the table and just manages to penetrate the dark of the background in subdued illumination of the objects there, the finely turned ink-stand and the keys on the sideboard. The human figure too with its lack of any strong emotion, seems to participate in the arcane calm of this stupendous still life, the recently opened letter, the slow dropping of the rose petals, the silk shawl from whose folds darts a lizard. Such searching after human truth, veiled with melancholy, is at quite the opposite pole from the dignified idealization pursued by Titian in the portraits he painted at about the same time.

This painting is one of the finest of a group of ambitiously composed portraits painted during Lotto’s principal Venetian period, in the years following his return from Bergamo. The central work in the group is the portrait of Andrea Odoni (1527), other major examples include Man with a Golden Paw (c. 1527) and Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia (1530-32). All of these portraits share the characteristics of a broad (rather than vertical) format, three-quarter-length pose, and circumstantially described surroundings filled with objects that appear to carry a symbolical significance.

This work has always been regarded as one of the finest of Lotto’s portraits for its subtly nuanced expression of the sitter’s face, and for the quality of the execution.

It is assumed that the sitter was Liberale da Pinedel (1495-1548), and the portrait was executed at Treviso. Pinedel’s family was originally from San Stefano di Pinidello near Ceneda, but had settled in Treviso in the fourteenth century. The family was originally employed as barrel-makers, but by the mid-sixteenth century it was closely associated with the legal profession, and in 1593 it was admitted to the ranks of the local nobility. Pinedel is portrayed wearing an expensive costume, with the few but telling accessories of a gentleman: gold chain, heavy gold ring, embroidered white handkerchief, and gloves.

The compositional formula resembles that evolved by Titian for his own aristocratic portraits.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century this portrait was attributed to Holbein. It is one of the finest of the extraordinary series of portraits that Lotto undertook while in Bergamo. The identity of the gentleman, dressed as a Bergamasque dignitary, with a fur-lined damask coat over two jackets and a large hat, is unknown.

The representation of the sitter from three different viewpoints makes this portrait highly unusual within Lotto’s own work and within Italian Renaissance portraiture generally. The identity of the sitter is not known, nor is it clear why he is presented in three different views.

According to one theory, the box placed prominently at the lower edge of the picture is a game of lottery, popular in the sixteenth century, and it was introduced by the painter as a play on his name, and hence the picture should be seen as a self-portrait. However, later it was realized that the foreground object is not a gambling game, but a case of rings, making it clear that the sitter was not the painter but a goldsmith. It is documented that Lotto had a particular interest in goldsmith work and jewelry and he had several goldsmiths among his closest friends.

Lotto painted relatively few female portraits of which the Portrait of a Lady is the earliest to survive. It shows a strong stylistic resemblance to the portrait of Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi. Like that portrait, this one may once have had a cover, the so-called Maiden’s Dream in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Until the late 19th century this portrait of an unidentified woman, who wears no jewelry and whose light brown hair is pulled back in a net cap, was attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger.

According to Roman legend, Lucretia, who was the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, was raped by the son of the Roman king - a dishonour which subsequently resulted in her suicide. The event is supposed to have precipitated the collapse of the Etruscan royal line (510 BC) and thus to have led to the founding of the Roman Republic.

In the 16th and 17th century Lucretia was frequently portrayed as a symbol of purity. Lotto presents us with the three-quarter view of a woman dressed in fine, richly trimmed clothes. Turned slightly away from the viewer, in her left hand she holds a drawing of the naked Lucretia about to stab herself in the heart. An inscription in Latin on the sheet on the table reads: “Following Lucretia’s example, no dishonoured woman should continue to live”.

In the exquisiteness of its palette, the painting ranks amongst Lotto’s greatest works. While the subject’s face follows on from the tradition of Giorgione, the contrast between her brightly lit shoulders and the richly gradated reds and greens of her dress is worthy of a Titian. The costly pendant suspended from the gold chain, its precious stones refracting the light, is virtually without equal in 16th-century Venetian painting.

The portrait depicts a man of a rather modest social standing, dressed simply, his gaze introspective, seen from up close and against a neutral background. Aside from the soft, wide-brimmed felt hat, the sitter possesses no other attribute. He could be an estate manager or other administrator on a farm.

During the years spent in Bergamo, Lotto repeatedly had the opportunity to develop his skill as a portraitist, sometimes including more than one sitter in the painting. Various symbolic features (among which the detail of the squirrel at the centre of the composition, barely seen in the reproduction, stands out) transform this painting into a eulogy of marital fidelity.

The inscription ‘Homo nunquam’ held by the husband is reference to the matrimonial fidelity.

Curtains are an important iconographical feature in Lotto’s work. The motif is adopted from devotional painting, where it often provided a majestically symbolic backdrop for saints or other biblical figures. Since early Christian times, the curtain had been seen as a “velum”, whose function was either to veil whatever was behind it, or, by an act of “revelatio”, or pulling aside of the curtain, to reveal it. To judge from the curtain which fills most of Lotto’s canvas, we may safely conclude that he intends to reveal very little indeed of the “true nature” of his sitter. What he finally does reveal is done with such reserve and discretion as to be barely insinuated.

More so even than Giorgione and Titian, it is Lorenzo Lotto who should be considered the true inventor of the Renaissance psychological portrait. Lorenzo Lotto was born in Venice. Though he spent many years in Bergamo, and probably entered Alvise Vivarini’s studio there, for much of his life he was restless, continually moving from town to town. In their haste to identify the artist’s subjects with his way of life, many early historians of art found in his work traces of the instability and restlessness ascribed to Lotto in sixteenth-century accounts of his life. This has meant that Lotto, to whom the authorship of only a small number of paintings can be attributed beyond doubt, has come to be seen as the painter of a considerable number of idiosyncratic works whose authorship cannot finally be determined. The heterogeneous style and subject-matter of Lotto’s oeuvre thus seems to confirm the conflicting nature of his personality.

Reference to the “psychological” portrait here should not be understood in the modern sense of the epithet. The visual medium chosen by Lotto to portray mental states was less one of analytical disclosure than its opposite: enigma. His tendency to present the spectator with riddles was intensified by his mysterious symbolism, and by his frequent emblematical or hieroglyphic allusiveness. Although Lotto’s allusions, in their literal sense, could be fathomed perhaps only by the “cognoscente” of his day, they are nevertheless capable of inspiring a wealth of vivid associative detail. This can be a source of fascination, as well as of frustration, to the the spectator who has little access to their original meaning.

Lotto’s early portrait of a young man wearing a round black beret and buttoned, black coat still owes much to the traditional aesthetic of imitation. Scholars have rightly pointed to the influence of Giovanni Bellini here. The physiognomy of his powerful nose and searching grey-brown eyes, which, under the slightly knitted brow, seem to brood on the spectator, to view him almost with suspicion, is so faithful a rendering of empirical detail that we are reminded of another painter, one whose brushwork was learned from the Netherlandish masters: Antonello da Messina. What is new here is the element of disquiet that has entered the composition along with the waves and folds of the white damask curtain. A breeze appears to have blown the curtain aside, and in the darkness, through a tiny wedge-shaped crack along the right edge of the painting, we see the barely noticeable flame of an oil-lamp.

Curtains are an important iconographical feature in Lotto’s work. The motif is adopted from devotional painting, where it often provided a majestically symbolic backdrop for saints or other biblical figures. Since early Christian times, the curtain had been seen as a “velum”, whose function was either to veil whatever was behind it, or, by an act of “re-velatio”, or pulling aside of the curtain, to reveal it. To judge from the curtain which fills most of Lotto’s canvas, we may safely conclude that he intends to reveal very little indeed of the “true nature” of his sitter. What he finally does reveal is done with such reserve and discretion as to be barely insinuated. For the burning lamp is undoubtedly an emblem of some kind. It may, in fact, be an allusion to the passage in St. John: “lux in tenebris” (‘And the light shineth in darkness’, Joh. 1, 5). It is interesting to note that Isabella d’Este chose to cite this light/darkness metaphor in her own “impresa” in 1525, altering the original to refer to her isolation at the Mantuan court: “sufficit unum (lumen) in tenebris” (a single light suffices in the darkness). Perhaps Lotto intended to convey a similar message through his portrait of this young man.

Although the date of this portrait is disputed, stylistic and morphological similarities to figures in the Recanati polyptych of 1508 have induced some critics to assign it that approximate date. Others have compared it to Raphael’s early portraits and dated it somewhat later.

What is new here is the element of disquiet that has entered the composition along with the waves and folds of the white damask curtain. A breeze appears to have blown the curtain aside, and in the darkness, through a tiny wedge-shaped crack along the right edge of the painting, we see the barely noticeable flame of an oil-lamp.

This is probably the last work of the artist, left unfinished due to illness and his death.

At the conclusion of a dramatic life, made even more difficult by religious doubts and financial problems, Lotto found shelter and peace in the Sanctuary of Loreto, where he became a lay brother. Here, in the years immediately preceding his death he painted his last works. This painting is the most notable of these, with its hesitant but penetrating emotion. The fatigued figure of the bearded man who appears at the door of the choir on the right has been identified as a self-portrait of the painter, now seventy-five years old.

The painter was commissioned by the Dominican friars at Recanati in 1506 to execute the polyptych consisting of six compartments. This structure (Sts Thomas Aquinas and Flavian at the left wing, Sts Peter the Martyr and Vitus at the right wing, Sts Lucy and Vincent Ferrer, the Pietà, and Sts Catherine of Siena and Sigismund at the upper part) is essentially Quattrocento in spirit.

The destruction of the original frame led to the breaking up of the work and the loss of the predella, the only surviving panel of which is kept in Vienna. However, the work, with its incisive characterization, maintains a unitary nature. The light and architectural setting link the three largest panels, while the Pietà above shares the dark background and the melancholy atmosphere of the two smaller parts, with pairs of saints absorbed in meditation.

The picture shows a detail of the central panel depicting St Dominic receiving the scapular from the Virgin.

This panel forms the upper part of the Recanati Altarpiece. It represents Joseph of Arythmea, the Madonna, Mary Magdalene and an angel at the left.

This panel is the lower right panel of the Recanati Altarpiece.

In this unusual version of the popular theme, the Holy Family is accompanied by St Justina of Padua, a Christian martyr, said to have died under the persecutions of the Emperor Maximian, by being pierced through the breast with a sword. She is frequently portrayed in the art of Padua and Venice.

The picture shows the main panel of the San Bartolomeo (Saint Bartholomew) Altarpiece. The represented saints are: Alexander, Barbara, Roch, Dominic, Mark (at the left of the Madonna), and Catherine, Stephen, Augustine, John the Baptist, Sebastian (at the right).

The San Bartolomeo Altarpiece, a Sacra Conversazione, the largest of Lotto’s altarpieces, was commissioned by Alessandro Martinengo in 1513 for the monastery of Sts Stephen and Dominic at Bergamo. It remained in the church until 1560 when the church was demolished. It was transferred to the Convent of Basella, then four years later to the church of San Bernardino. Finally, it was placed to the choir of the Dominican church of San Bartolomeo. In the 18th century it was dismembered, the main panel remained in the church, the other parts are dispersed. Before being moved to the present church it included numerous minor elements (cymatium, predella and small panels set in the columns of the frame) which are now to be found in various museums.

The use of the architectonic scheme of the Virgin and saints is orthodox only in appearance. In fact many details introduce a vein of strong tension and undulating movement. It is interesting to note the rebus of words and objects held in the high by the angels, which was typical of Lotto’s liking for enigmas.

The San Bernardino Altarpiece is one of the masterpieces of Lotto, in which he utilizes all his previous experiences: the rules of Raphael, the sfumato of Leonardo, the intimacy of Foppa, and the northern pathos. The represented saints, flanking the Madonna and Child, are Joseph, Bernardino, John the Baptist, and Anthony Abbot.

Recent restoration has revealed the limpidity of the original colours. An excellent example of the most distinctive stage of Lotto’s painting, this altarpiece is movingly expresses the feeling of passing time. The green canopy, which the angels stretch between them with difficulty is slipping down the steps of the throne, while the Virgin leans from the shade towards the light with an unconventional gesture, and the saints are conversing animatedly.

This is the most well-known detail of the altarpiece: the angel at the foot of the throne has suddenly stopped writing, and casts a penetrating glance toward the viewer.

The painting is signed on the step as L. Lotus MDXXI.

Lotto’s three great altarpieces for churches in Bergamo (the San Bartolomeo Altarpiece, the San Bernardino Altarpiece and the Santo Spirito Altarpiece), which were painted between 1516 and 1521, in the same periods as Titian’s Assumption and Pesaro altar, are High Renaissance compositions, but closer, in their symmetrical arrangement, to Florentine painters like Fra Bartolommeo and Albertinelli, than to Titian himself. Yet for all the balance of their compositions, they remain restless in detail, and a passion for bright local colour, and smooth hard surfaces prevents Lotto from achieving, or even aiming at, the painterly unity of his contemporaries. This failure to integrate perhaps reflects, at the deepest level, the tensions of a neurotic personality.

The Santo Spirito Altarpiece offers further proof of the variety of Lotto’s sources of inspiration. While the infant St John hugging the lamb can be linked to Leonardo, the variegated flight of angels above the Virgin’s head can be seen in relation to Correggio’s parallel inventions.

The represented saints in the Santo Spirito Altarpiece are Catherine of Alexandria, Augustine, Sebastian, Anthony the Abbot, and the Young John the Baptist.

The Santo Spirito Altarpiece offers further proof of the variety of Lotto’s sources of inspiration. The variegated flight of angels above the Virgin’s head can be seen in relation to Correggio’s parallel inventions.

The Santo Spirito Altarpiece offers further proof of the variety of Lotto’s sources of inspiration. The infant St John hugging the lamb can be linked to Leonardo.

Lotto was commissioned in 1524 by Girolamo Passi, one of the governors of the Consorzio della Misericordia to paint a fresco cycle at San Michele al Pozzo Bianco in Bergamo. He painted scenes from the life of the Virgin in a chapel situated to the left of the chancel. The scenes of the cycle consist of the Birth of the Virgin in the lunette opposite the entrance, above the altar; the Presentation and the Marriage of the Virgin, combined in the right lunette; the Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate in the left lunette, and the Visitation, above the entrance to the chapel. Represented in the cupola is God the Father in a glory of angels, a traditional complement to the Annunciation group.

The Birth of the Virgin is set in a sixteenth-century domestic interior, with a beamed ceiling, a bottle-glass window, a Savonarola chair, and maidservants in contemporary dress. The scene retains the genre-like naturalism of the St Barbara frescoes at Trescore.

This self-portrait shows connections with Titian’s style, it is probably a late work by the artist.

This painting was originally planned as an image for private devotion and transformed by Lotto himself for public display in a church. Some scholars have remarked on the intensely portraitlike quality of the panel.

The Correggesque poetic grace of the image had been also remarked upon. Although it is not possible to confirm any contact with Correggio, the parallels between this painting and Correggio’s Portrait of a Gentlewoman in the Hermitage are tempting. Almost two decades later, Moretto da Brescia, whose esteem for the artist is well known, had this panel in mind when he painted his Salome.

The panel underwent several restorations between 1934 and 1984.

Like the panel representing St Sebastian (in the same museum), this panel was a side wing of a polyptych.

This is one of the three predella paintings of the altarpiece Lotto painted for the Dominican church of Santo Stefano in Bergamo between 1513 and 1516. The central panel is now in the church of San Bartolomeo in Bergamo.