MADRID.- The Museo del Prado is presenting the first major monographic exhibition on Lorenzo Lotto’s portraits. 

Lorenzo Lotto (Venice, 1480 – Loreto, 1557) was one of the most unique and fascinating artists of the Italian Cinquecento. His reputation has consistently grown among scholars and art lovers since Bernard Berenson devoted the first monograph to him, Lorenzo Lotto. An Essay in Constructive Criticism, published in 1895. Writing at the time of the emergence of Freudian psychoanalysis, Berenson saw Lotto as the first portraitist to be interested in reflecting his sitters’ states of mind, and as such the first modern one. Although interest in the artist has been particularly notable since the 1980s, until now no exhibition has focused exclusively on the portraits, making this project a pioneering one. 

The exhibition focuses on already known aspects of Lotto’s portraiture such as their varied typology, psychological depth and complex symbolism. In addition, it explores other less familiar ones such as the artist’s use of similar resources in his portraits and religious works, the importance of the objects present in the portraits as reflections of material culture of the day, and the creative process behind the realisation of these works. 

Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits also offers an unprecedented perspective on the artist’s works through the presence in the galleries of objects similar to those seen in the portraits, in a reflection of material culture of the day. In addition, it looks at the way in which the artist conceived and executed his portraits and in this regard and given the lack of technical analyses of these works, the inclusion of drawings by him (rarely displayed alongside the paintings) are of particular importance. 

The variety of typologies that Lotto employed; the overt or concealed symbolism within them; the psychological depth with which he imbued his models; and the importance he gave to objects in order to define their status, interests and aspirations all give these portraits a degree of profundity which allow Lotto to be seen as the artist who best reflected Italy at the time, a country experiencing a profound period of change. 

Lorenzo Lotto (Venice, ca.1480 – Loreto, 1556/57) was one of the great Renaissance portraitists due to the variety of typologies that he employed, the psychological depth with which he endowed his sitters, and his judicious use of objects to define the status, interests and aspirations of his subjects. 

An artist who experienced both success and failure, after his death Lotto fell into almost complete oblivion until the late 19th century when the art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) rediscovered him, presenting him as the first Italian painter interested in depicting his sitters’ states of mind and hence the first modern portraitist. This interpretation, which is still accepted today, found fertile ground in a society increasingly concerned with profound aspects of the individual, and it is seemingly not by chance that Berenson was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and of the birth of psychoanalysis. 

This exhibition, the first on Lotto’s portraits, includes works created in the places where this nomadic painter was active: his native Venice, Treviso, Bergamo, Rome and the Marches, produced over the course of fifty years. The earliest reveal echoes of Antonello da Messina, filtered through his master Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini, in addition to northern elements (principally Dürer) and the influence of Giorgione, Raphael, Leonardo and finally Titian in the 1540s. Lotto re-elaborated these sources to formulate his own language in which looks, gestures and objects combine to transcend the physical description of the sitters and their status and thus reveal their innermost thoughts. These are paintings possessed of a powerful narrative potential which invite the viewer to imagine the lives of their subjects while also testifying to the period of profound transformation experienced in Italy at that time. 

EARLY YEARS IN TREVISO 
Lotto produced his first works in Treviso, north of Venice, around 1498. At this point he was an artist dominated by the “myth” of Antonello da Messina, active in Venice between 1475 and 1476, although this influence was modified by that of other painters. The technique of his early portraits recalls Alvise Vivarini, his probable master, but his models derive from Giovanni Bellini, the preeminent figure in Venetian painting at that date. In addition, Lotto’s work reveals both direct northern influences (German painters were present in Treviso), and indirect ones derived from prints. This Germanic component increased following Dürer’s arrival in Venice in late 1505. 

The Treviso period was a successful one, during which Lotto established contacts with prominent intellectuals such as Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi, and his reputation spread to towns such as Asolo where he painted Caterina Cornaro, the last Queen of Cyprus. He similarly flourished in Recanati in the Marches and by this point his career provided a sufficient basis to confront the great challenge of Rome, where his arrival was probably facilitated by Bramante, architect to Saint Peter’s. Lotto is documented working in the Stanza della Segnatura and di Eliodoro in 1509 although nothing survives of that project, now concealed by Raphael’s frescoes. 

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Bishop Bernardo de’Rossi, 1505. Oil on panel, 52 x 40 cm, Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte.

Lorenzo Lotto, Allegory of Virtue and Vice, 1505. Oil on panel, 56.5 x 47.2 cm.Washington, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.156.

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Young Man with a Lamp, c. 1506. Oil on panel, 42.3 x 35.3 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie.

Lorenzo Lotto, Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Anthony Abbot and Louis of Toulouse, 1506. Oil on panel, 175 x 165 cm. Asolo, catedral de Santa Maria Assunta.

BERGAMO, 1513-1525 
Following his lack of success in Rome, in 1510-13 Lotto returned to the Marches (Recanati and Jesi) where he painted various portraits present in the exhibition (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Uffizi), before moving to Bergamo in 1513. It was there, particularly from 1521 onwards, that he produced some of his finest portraits, commissioned by members of a wealthy and ambitious upper middle class prepared to accept innovative artistic solutions. With their encouragement Lotto experimented with every representational type and with an originality unparalleled in Italian art of the period. He brought significant innovations to the individual and double portrait and also to the crypto-portrait and portraits included in devotional works. These are living images which reflect both his sitters’ social status and their cultural sophistication. They include numerous references to mythology, classical art and the culture of emblems and all are characterised by their ability to establish a dialogue with the viewer. 

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Man with a Rosary, c. 1518. Oil on panel, 78.5 x 62 cm. Nivå, The Nivaagaard Collection.

Lorenzo Lotto, Micer Marsilio Cassotti and his wife Faustina, 1523. Oil on canvas, 71 x 84 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

THE MATRIMONIAL PORTRAIT 
Lotto responded to the freedom conceded to him by the social elites in Bergamo with unprecedented pictorial formats. The most innovative was undoubtedly the matrimonial portrait, showing a couple in a single visual field accompanied by objects and elements open to a symbolic reading. It has been suggested that this typology is northern in origin and earlier family portraits are certainly known from Flanders and Germany. Given Lotto’s artistic origins, however, a classical influence should not be rejected, derived from both sculpture and from numismatics and gem carving. In these portraits, most of them associated with the prominent Cassotti family, Lotto employed an innovative horizontal format, the success of which subsequently led him to use it in Venice for individual portrait

Lorenzo Lotto, Marriage Portrait (Giovanni Maria Cassotti y Laura Assonica?), c. 1523 - 1524. Oil on canvas, 96 x 116 cm. Saint Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum.

RETURN TO VENICE 
Equipped with the expressive and formal resources that he devised in Bergamo, Lotto reappeared in Venice in late 1525. In the context of painting, the city was more dynamic than ever due to the renovatio Urbis [modernisation of the city] promoted by the authorities under Doge Andrea Gritti (1523-38). Portraiture was, however, the pictorial genre most subject to earlier conventions, with a focus on individuals of high social rank depicted in half-length or three-quarter format. This explains the success of the innovative proposals offered by Lotto, who adapted the horizontal format of his matrimonial portraits to individual ones, introducing a “speaking” space into the painting through the sitters’ gestures or the objects that accompany them. During these years Lotto produced some of his most memorable creations, depicting intentionally enigmatic figures in dynamic compositions of considerable size. 

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527. Oil on canvas, 104.6 x 116.6 cm. The Royal Collection Trust, Hampton Court.

Lorenzo Lotto, Triple Portrait of a Goldsmith, c. 1530. Oil on canvas, 52 x 79 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie.

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Young Man, 1530 - 1532. Oil on canvas, 98 x 111 cm. Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia.

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia, c. 1530 - 1533. Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 110.6 cm, London, The National Gallery

LOTTO AND THE DOMINICANS 
On his arrival in Venice in 1525 Lotto stayed with the Dominican community of Santi Giovanni e Paolo where he painted its treasurer, Marcantonio Luciani. Soon after this the Order may have commissioned him to execute the large pala d’altare shown in this gallery and depicting The Alms of Saint Antoninus, completed in the early 1540s. Lotto’s connections with the Dominicans, particularly its Observant branch, would be close and in his will of 1531 he expressed the wish to be buried in the Order’s habit. In addition, part of the fee for the painting of Saint Antoninus came from sermons given by Friar Lorenzo da Bergamo, whose portrait is displayed later in the exhibition. Another Dominican monk, Angelo Ferretti, is represented with the attributes of Saint Peter Martyr in the last section of the exhibition. This gallery also offers a reflection on the relationship between portraiture and religious painting and on one of the liveliest debates in art at the time: the paragone, which disputed the relative merits of painting and sculpture. 

Lorenzo Lotto, Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherines with donor Nicolò Bonghi, 1523. Oil on canvas, 172 x 143 cm. Bergamo, Accademia Carrara - Pinacoteca di Arte Antica.

FREEDOM IN THE MARCHES 
Despite a few partial successes, Lotto never achieved his desired triumph in Venice. Competition brought enemies, leading to various failures. The result was psychological distress, and in a letter of this period he admitted to being “of greatly altered mind due to various and strange disturbances.” During his time in Venice he maintained his connections with the Marches, to where he regularly sent works and where he finally moved, probably in search of a less stressful artistic environment. In 1534 he was in Ancona, in 1535 in Jesi, then again in Ancona in 1538, followed by Macerata and Cingoli in 1539, places with a less sophisticated local clientele. For these portraits Lotto used his experience gained in Bergamo and Venice but we witness an increasing appearance of isolated, melancholy individuals, as in Portrait of a Man from the Galleria Borghese, who seem to echo his own state of mind. 

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Man, c. 1535. Oil on panel, 118 x 105 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman with Gloves (liberale da Pinedel), 1542 - 1544. Oil on canvas, 90 x 75 cm. Milano, Pinacoteca di Brera.

“ALONE, WITH NO TRUSTWORTHY GUIDE AND VERY ANXIOUS OF MIND” 
Aged nearly sixty, in 1540 Lotto returned to Venice, only to leave two years later for Treviso. It was there, between 1542 and 1545, that he painted some of his most intense portraits in which he represented the irreversible and devastating effects of suffering and old age, devoid of any concessions to idealisation. Most of these works are imbued with the painter’s own melancholy. A veil of sadness almost like the shadow of death spreads over the sitters who posed for him and paradoxically their sumptuous clothes almost acquire the significance of a vanitas. These works’ chromatic and compositional sobriety reflects the impact of Titian, albeit more in formal than conceptual terms as Lotto avoided idealising his models. In 1545 he returned to Venice for the last time, drawing up a second will on 25 March 1546 in which he included the phrase used as the title for this section of the exhibition: “Alone, with no trustworthy guide and very anxious of mind.” 

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children, 1547. Oil on canvas, 104.5 x 138 cm. London, National Gallery, Bequeathed by Miss Sarah Solly, 1879. 

DRAWINGS 
Drawings by Lotto, whether portraits or religious compositions, have been almost entirely absent from exhibitions on the artist, which has complicated their study. The present one includes various examples of different types attributed to the artist. Some must have been made as preparatory studies for painted portraits, ranging from rapidly-executed sketches to squared-up designs to be transferred to panel or canvas. Others are so highly finished that they seem independent works, possibly made as gifts. From the Libro di spese diverse, in which Lotto set out his accounts, we know the variety of drawing materials that he acquired (charcoal, black and white chalk, tailor’s chalk and ink), revealing his versatility as a draughtsman. Also on display is a fascinating portrait in oil on paper recently attributed to the artist, which has the spontaneity of a sketch from life and represents an example of this technique, recorded in documents but known from very few surviving examples.

LATE PORTRAITS 
In 1549 Lotto left his native Venice for the last time and returned to the Marches. By now physically weak, weary and disillusioned, he was so in need of money that he organised a lottery in Ancona to sell his works but with disappointing results. It was here that he painted his last portraits, characterised by an intensity and inventiveness no longer present in his large religious compositions of this period. 

Lotto spent his last years in the sanctuary at Loreto, which he entered in the summer of 1552. He became a lay member in 1554 and was buried there in late 1556. Significantly, he painted various works for the sanctuary but none of them were portraits. He left his few possessions there, including his account book, the Libro di spese diverse, a unique document which allows for a detailed reconstruction of the last two decades of his life and identifies the individuals whom he portrayed.  

CRYPTO-PORTRAITS 
Crypto-portraits were a speciality of Lotto’s which he cultivated throughout his career, comprising depictions of the sitter with the attributes of the figure with whom they identified; a classical deity such as Venus, an ancient heroine or a saint of their special devotion. Particularly numerous are Lotto’s portraits of Dominicans monks with the symbols of saints of their Order and this exhibition includes examples of friars portrayed as Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Peter Martyr. It is very likely they were commissioned by these monks’ communities as “mirrors of virtue” for their members but in many cases the degree of identification achieved by Lotto between sitter and saint is troublingly ambiguous.