Lorenzo Lotto

Lorenzo Lotto
Self-portrait, 1540s, oil on panel, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Born	Lorenzo Lotto c. 1480 Venice, Italy
Died	1556/57 Loreto, Marche, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painting
Notable work	Polyptych of Saint Domenico
Movement	High Renaissance

Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480 – 1556/57) was an Italian painter, draughtsman and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school, though much of his career was spent in other North Italian cities. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits. While he was active during the High Renaissance, his nervous and eccentric posings and distortions represent a transitional stage to the first Florentine and Roman Mannerists of the 16th century.

During his lifetime, Lorenzo Lotto was a well-respected painter and certainly popular in Northern Italy. He is traditionally included in the Venetian School, but his independent career actually places him outside the Venetian art scene. He was certainly not as highly regarded in Venice as in the other towns where he worked. He had a stylistic individuality, even an idiosyncratic style. After his death, he gradually became neglected and then almost forgotten. This could be attributed to the fact that his oeuvre now remains in lesser known churches or in provincial museums.

Born in Venice, he worked in Treviso (1503–1506), in the Marches (1506–1508), in Rome (1508–1510), in Bergamo (1513–1525), in Venice (1525–1549), in Ancona (1549) and finally, as a Franciscan lay brother, in Loreto (1549–1556).

Little is known of his training. As a Venetian he was influenced by Giovanni Bellini as he had a good knowledge of contemporary Venetian painting. Though Bellini was doubtless not his teacher, the influence is clear in his early painting Virgin and Child with St. Jerome (1506) (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). However, in his portraits and in his early painting Allegory of Virtue and Vice (1505) (National Gallery of Art, Washington) he shows the influence of Giorgione's Naturalism. As he grew older his style changed, perhaps evolving, from a detached Giorgionesque classicism, to a more vibrant dramatic setpiece, more reminiscent of his contemporary from Parma, Correggio.