Lorenzo Lotto

Lorenzo Lotto was a Venetian Renaissance painter with a very personal, restless style. He is best known for portraits that seem to reveal the sitter’s mood and thoughts, often with a symbolic object on the table, and for altarpieces with vivid colour and unexpected, sometimes nervous poses.

Born in Venice around 1480, he spent much of his career away from the city, working in Treviso, the Marche, Rome and above all Bergamo, where he was most productive between 1513 and 1525. He later returned to Venice, and in his last years joined the community at the shrine of Loreto, where he died. Largely forgotten for centuries, he was rediscovered in the late 19th century by the art historian Bernard Berenson. His portraits hang in the Accademia in Venice, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre and the Uffizi.

In Portrait of a Young Man and Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi, look at the direct gaze and the sharp, cool light.