Lorenzo Lotto Author:Bernard Berenson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LORENZO LOTTO CHAPTER I LOTTO'S EARLY YEARS FROM 1480-1512 Lorenzo Di Tommaso Lotto must have been born in 1480. 1480; for, in a will made by him on Ma... more »rch 24, 1546, he speaks of himself as being 'about 66 years old' (Gust. Bampo, // Testamento di Lorenzo Lotto, Archivio Veneto, vol. xxxiv). Other documents pub- lished by Dr. Bampo (Archivio Veneto, vol. xxxii, p. 169) prove conclusively that Lotto was born in Venice. London Collection Of Sir W. Martin Conway. Danae. Danae, completely clothed, reclines in a wooded 1498 7). landscape. To the L. a female satyr peers from behind a tree, and a faun lies in the foreground to R., while Cupid pours a shower of gold from the clouds. On wood, 16 x 13 in. This is clearly the least mature of Lotto's existing works. It resembles Alvise Vivarini in type, draperies, landscape, greyish tone, and cool effects of light. The face of the Danae, with its full oval and round chin, recalls one of Alvise's later pictures, the Madonna of the Redentore at Venice. Her loose construction and 1498(7). awkward pose suggest Jacopo di Barbari's engravings. The Cupid, with his turned-up nose, fat cheeks, and chubby limbs, is identical in general build with the putti in Alvise's Redentore picture. The hand of the female satyr, with its long, clumsy fingers, recalls the hands in Alvise's Berlin altar-piece (No. 38), while the clinging drapery of the Danae, composed of soft stuff that tends to arrange itself in close lineal folds converging at a point (vividly recalling the draperies of the putti in the Redentore Madonna, and of Alvise's Sta. Giustina de Borromei in the Casa Bagati at Milan, and certain details in his last picture, the altar-piece of 1503 in the Frari at Venice), is even more strikingly like the drapery of J acopo di Barba...« less