Introduction / The Early Years
Lotto in Bergamo / Lotto's Carpets
Pictures for Private Devotion
Lotto's Patrons
Return to Venice
The Later Years

Lotto's Patrons

During his years in Bergamo, Lotto worked for a variety of patrons, both institutions and individuals. Confraternities, or religious brotherhoods, commissioned him to paint altarpieces such as the Trinity for the church of Santa Trinità, Bergamo, and the scenes from the life of Saint Lucy for San Floriano, Jesi. Wealthy merchants, members of the professional classes, and aristocrats ordered portraits and private devotional works for their homes. Lotto painted the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, for the bedchamber of Marsilio Cassotti, the merchant whose marriage portrait appears in the previous gallery. The little Saint Jerome apparently once hung in the house of Domenico Tassi, the brother of a prominent bishop. Domenico's wife, Elisabetta Rota, evidently commissioned Christ Bidding Farewell to His Mother, which includes her portrait. She kneels in a palace courtyard with a garden probably quite similar to the one in which Rota passed her days.