What does Topo Gigio have to do with Lorenzo Lotto? A play answers the question!

A play about one of the greatest Italian artists ever, Lorenzo L otto (Venice, 1480 - Loreto, 1557): it is titled Lorenzo Lotto and the typescript from heaven. A True Story, is written by art historian Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, premiered Aug. 9 in Monte San Giusto, and will be performed again Sept. 12 in Padua in the courtyard of Alvise Cornaro’s palace. The show, starring Venetian actress Margherita Stevanato, concludes the Arena Romana Estate 2020 event, organized by Promovies in Collaboration with the Department of Culture of the City of Padua (tickets, costing 8 euros, can be purchased in advance.

The show was born out of a fortuitous chance, which also involves TV’s most famous puppet, Topo Gigio: it all stems from the discovery of an unpublished monograph on Lorenzo Lotto written by a Venetian intellectual and director, Federico Caldura (Venice, 1923 - 1975), and received as an inheritance by a lady also from Venice. Caldura is best known for collaborating with his wife, Maria Perego (Venice, 1923 - Milan, 2019), on the creation of the highly successful character of Topo Gigio. Both Caldura and Maria Perego were puppeteers who later became world famous thanks to the funny little mouse, and they were both deeply in love with Lorenzo Lotto from the time of the 1953 exhibition in Venice’s Doge’s Palace, curated by one of Lorenzo Lotto’s leading experts, art historian Pietro Zampetti.

“Although it is not the text of an art critic,” Dal Pozzolo explained, “it contains insights and interpretations of rare sensitivity (especially for the Marche works), which in my opinion make it necessary to imagine some form of preservation and enhancement.” Meanwhile, the scholar had been in touch with Maria Perego prior to her passing that occurred last year, and the celebrated author had revealedat that she had dedicated an episode of the 1990s Topo Gigio series(S.O.S. Work of Art Calls) to Lorenzo Lotto. “The singularity of the story,” Dal Pozzolo concludes, “prompted me to write a text for a theatrical narration with a reader, Margherita Stevanato, which we presented on Aug. 9 in Monte San Giusto and are now doing again in Padua, on the 12th, in the courtyard of Alvise Cornaro’s palace, where the Loggia and Odeo di Falconetto are.”

But what will the play be about? Here’s the synopsis: “on the verge of death, Federico Caldura, a Venetian director and writer, begs his best friend to take care of a book on Lorenzo Lotto that he had been working on for decades. The friend - cartoonist Mario Faustinelli - promises him that he will. The year is 1975. Mario for years tries to shape those thousand scattered sheets, typing them on a typewriter, integrating and annotating them, waiting to find an interested publisher. Who will not be there. After his death, the typescript reaches his friend Rosanna Medici. Rosanna studies it, but does not understand how valuable it might be from an art-historical and critical point of view, and above all does not know how to handle it. So on January 6, 2019, she writes an email to Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, a specialist who had just opened an exhibition on Lotto’s portraits at the Prado in Madrid and the National Gallery in London. The encounter is a chronicle of a possible redemption: it tells the story of a typescript that arrives as if from heaven after hanging by a thread for decades, questioning the fate of our words deposited on papers-which we can deliberately keep or lose-and interweaving it with that of Lorenzo Lotto, a solitary and humble artist. As solitary and umbratile had been the author of the text: Federico Caldura, with his wife Maria Perego, the creator of the very famous Topo Gigio.”

The date is therefore set in Padua for Sept. 12.

Left: Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Gentleman of the House of Rovero, detail (c. 1530-1532; oil on canvas, 97 x 110 cm; Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia). Right, Topo Gigio.

What does Topo Gigio have to do with Lorenzo Lotto? A play answers the question!

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