Lorenzo Lotto, ‘Portrait of Marsilio Cassotti and his wife Faustina’, 1523 © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Lorenzo Lotto Portraits – National Gallery London The National Gallery stages the first-ever exhibition of portraits by the Italian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto: ‘Lorenzo Lotto Portraits’ bring together many of Lotto’s best portraits spanning his entire career from collections around the world. 5 November 2018 – 10 February 2019.]]>
Source: National Gallery London
“Lotto was the first Italian painter who was sensitive to the varying status of the human soul. Never before or since has anyone brought out on the face more of the inner life….”
Bernard Berenson, art historian, 1895.
The exhibition includes such masterpieces as the ‘Bishop Bernardo de‘ Rossi’ (1505) from the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, united with its striking allegorical cover from the National Gallery of Art, Washington; and the monumental altarpiece of ‘The Alms of Saint Antoninus of Florence’ (1540–2) from the Basilica Santi Giovanni e Paulo in Venice coming to the UK for the first time. In this painting Lotto not only inserted portraits of members of the commissioning confraternity, but also, highly unusually, paid poor people to sit for him.
Born in Venice, Lotto travelled extensively and worked in different parts of Italy, most notably Treviso, Bergamo, Venice, and the Italian Marches. He spent his final years as a lay member of the confraternity of the Holy House at Loreto (1549–56.) In today’s terms, his disposition in the later decades of his life would probably be described as clinically depressed. A melancholic empathy with his sitters is evident in his in late portraits.
Staged broadly chronologically the exhibition starts with Lotto’s earliest portraits before exploring the work from his most significant periods in Bergamo and Venice and ending with the late paintings. Unusually for a National Gallery exhibition objects related to those he depicted are also displayed.
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