Introduction / The Early Years
Lotto in Bergamo / Lotto's Carpets
Pictures for Private Devotion
Lotto's Patrons
Return to Venice
The Later Years
Return to Venice
Lotto finally returned to Venice in 1525, perhaps lured by a major commission. Titian, considered the greatest Venetian painter, dominated the artistic scene there. In response to the challenge he posed, Lotto's paintings of this period show a new grandeur and concern for beauty. Faces of saints are idealized and their gestures more rhetorical. His portraits become dramatic and sumptuous, with greater emphasis on the texture and sheen of the sitters' costumes. Lotto's vivid colors, as in the Lady as Lucretia, and his expansive use of symbols offered Venetians an alternative to Titian's sober, restrained approach to portraiture.
During Lotto's years in Venice, he painted mostly portraits and devotional pictures for the home. One of his few public commissions was the altarpiece of Saint Nicholas in Glory for the church of Santa Maria dei Carmini, exhibited on the end wall. Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop, was especially venerated in maritime Venice because of his power to protect sailors at sea. Beneath the clouds supporting the holy figures, a storm is passing over a landscape that includes a harbor with ships. This poetic landscape, in bird's eye view, was inspired by Netherlandish or German pictures that Lotto could have seen in Venetian collections.
While in Venice, Lotto continued to produce works for patrons in Central Italy, such as the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Holy Family. One of the most important of these commissions was the altarpiece Saints Christopher, Roch, and Sebastian.