The Grand Palais salutes this painter with a retrospective, the first stages of which were shown in Washington and Bergamo. Lotto’s works have long been misunderstood, despite Berenson’s monograph, which continues to be the authoritative reference. Before the Counter Reformation, Lotto personified the end of mannerism. Textbooks and essays intentionally ignored all but the maniera moderna style in their studies, that of the students of Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian, who were more concerned with tonality. Still, Lotto made himself felt, against the grain so to speak, despite the boldness of the century’s reformers. Isolated and marginal, he left a unique oeuvre that today should be seen in the perspective of its epoch. His touch is nervous and incisive; his light is cold, descending from the northern regions. In Venice, at its cultural peak, painters and musicians favoured the liturgical and secular life. The San Marco basilica was the center of musical activity. The Flemish Adrian Willaert, who was named maestro di cappella at the end of the 1520s, created the conditions that made the Cità the premier seat of music in Europe. A contemporary of Lotto, he too was famous for his religious production, and he joined with the painter to celebrate the culture and sophistication of the princes in a secular vein. Lotto’s portraits and Willaert’s madrigals and villanelles escorted the 17th century to the arrival of aesthetic baroque. They expressed what Monteverdi called (when referring to Willaert) “the crowning of the prima prattica.”
Lotto’s lesson
What we learn from Lotto is his capacity to study past styles (Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina) and incorporate them in his own work. From his contemporaries Grünewald, Raphael, and Titian, at the end of his life, he introduced the technique and certain principles of composition from the Assomption of Ancona. Then he adapted them according to his own demanding personality and sensitivity, examining the aesthetic styles of Italian mannerism, be they Venetian (Bellini), Roman (Raphael), Lombard (Leonardo da Vinci), or German (Dürer). Contrary to his contemporaries, Lorenzo Lotto did not choose a precise path. He seized, sought to understand, then renewed. The absence of a direct link with any single school or painter makes his oeuvre difficult to understand. His diverse styles and polymorphic genius are not based on any particular method or common approach. This diverse inspiration creates a persistent opaqueness. Do we really know Lotto? His is an oeuvre that is disconcerting, illusive, original, without fixed reference or ties, for it operates on the principle of diffraction, where the connoisseur’s eye flounders. Born in a milieu influenced by Bellini, he quickly severed links. As a Venetian he spent his formative years in exile and died outside of Venice. Never did Titian’s paintings, the greatest painter of his time, appear to directly influence him, at least not in the long run.
Artistic wandering, instability of a free spirit, solitary, and dissenting—everything catches one off guard. Still, there is the obstinate independence that singles him out and makes one take note. His non-realist, deliberately esoteric art is fascinating because it expresses anxiety. The challenge of Lorenzo Lotto’s oeuvre is to restore him to his place of honor.
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