General catalog of Lorenzo Lotto's paintings by Enrico Dal Pozzolo published

The General Catalogue of the Paintings of Lorenzo Lotto (Venice, 1480 - Loreto, 1556/1557), a fundamental work for the knowledge of the great sixteenth-century Venetian painter, edited by one of his greatest specialists, Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, with the collaboration of three art historians who are experts on Lotto, namely Raffaella Poltronieri, Valentina Castegnaro and Marta Paraventi, was released a few weeks ago. The volume, published by Skira (624 pages, 95 euros, EAN 9788857239996), constitutes a major editorial undertaking that updates the last complete catalogs raisonné on Lotto, those dating back to 1975: these are two works edited respectively by Rodolfo Pallucchini and Giordana Mariani Canova for the Classici dell’arte Rizzoli series and by Flavio Caroli for Edizioni d’Arte Il Fiorino (the latter republished in 1980 by Fabbri under the title Lorenzo Lotto e la nascita della psicologia moderna). Dal Pozzolo’s work thus constitutes an important expansion, in light of the fact that in the last forty years studies on Lorenzo Lotto have undergone important and notable advances: one need only think of the exhibitions of recent years, such as the one on Lotto’s portraits held at the Prado in Madrid, or the significant review Lorenzo Lotto. The Lure of the Marches, both moreover curated by Dal Pozzolo himself (the one at the Prado in collaboration with Miguel Falomir).

The new catalog raisonné divides the paintings into different sections: autographs, dubious works, workshop or close circle paintings, copies from lost originals, paintings expunged from Lotto’s catalog, and paintings that are lost or cannot be identified with certainty. In the volume’s introduction, Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo traces the history of critical studies on Lorenzo Lotto, which began systematically in 1895 with the first monograph, compiled by Bernard Berenson, which was followed by several volumes (although few were the catalogs raisonné with the totality of works referable to Lotto). A turning point, the author writes, came in 1953, when the first comprehensive monograph on the artist, edited by Pietro Zampetti, was held at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, gathering together almost everything that could be exhibited by Lorenzo Lotto. This was followed shortly by a volume that constituted a de facto first catalog raisonné, edited by Anna Banti and Antonio Boschetto for Sansoni. To wait, however, for the first, true catalogs raisonné it was necessary to wait until 1975, with the aforementioned volumes by Pallucchini and Canova and by Caroli.

Beginning in 1980, the year of the release of the reissue of Caroli’s catalog raisonné, there followed an intense season of studies, the milestones of which Dal Pozzolo summarizes: Giorgio Mascherpa’s monograph (1980), Francesca Cortesi Bosco’s studies on the frescoes in the Suardi Oratory (1980) and the choir of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (1987), Augusto Gentili’s book on the young Lotto (1985), Jacques Bonnet’s popular monograph (1996) and Carlo Pirovano’s (2001). In addition to these books, there are several exhibitions, four of which Dal Pozzolo considered indispensable because of their importance: the one at the National Gallery in Washington (1997), curated by David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey and Mario Lucco, which had a stop in Bergamo the following year, the large monograph at the Scuderie del Quirinale (2011) curated by Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, and the two exhibitions mentioned above, the one in Madrid and the one in the Marche region (which took place in Macerata, at Palazzo Bonaccorsi), held in 2018 and 2019. It is in the context of the latter two exhibitions that the project for a new catalog raisonné on Lorenzo Lotto was born. “The enormous effort produced on those occasions for the collection of bibliographies and images meant, in fact,” recalls Dal Pozzolo, “that it was deemed appropriate to signal the possibility of its realization to the Marche Region, the territorial area that, with as many as 25 works, holds to date just under fifteen percent of the artist’s production.” The proposal was accepted, partly financed with funds related to the enhancement of the treasures affected by the 2016 Central Italy earthquake, and work began in 2017. Five years, then, to arrive at a far-reaching end result.

The work, which had to take into account thousands of bibliographical entries (in the end, from the necessary selection, more than two thousand five hundred were retained), has a classic layout: the works are presented with in-depth fact sheets, photographs, technical information, single bibliography, and sometimes even comparison images to “recall crucial aspects related to preparatory drawings, influences, parallels, derivations and more.” The purpose of the volume, Dal Pozzolo writes, is on the one hand to “offer a review of the whole, containing summary information on the individual pieces” (also because books could be written on most of Lorenzo Lotto’s works in their own right, as in fact has often happened, also by the author of the catalog raisonné), and on the other hand that of “making available to a public that is not only made up of specialists - but also of simple enthusiasts and teachers - a volume that is easy to consult, which could constitute a vademecum to the master’s pictorial production, rich in images, information and internal references.” One of the strengths of the volume is precisely the rich iconographic apparatus, which counts on high-quality images. There is also a long essay tracing the artist’s entire career, closed by an up-to-date biographical account.

As for the autograph paintings, ordered chronologically (starting with the Portrait of a Young Man from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo), some of the main new additions or confirmations (omitting, for reasons of space, all new hypotheses, proposals or confirmations by the author on the dates): the portrait of the Dominican friar in Upton House should actually be recognized as a Dominican and not, as recently proposed, as a Camaldolese or Cistercian; the possible identification of one of the inspirers of thePetrarchan Allegory in the National Gallery in Washington in the scholar Giovanni Aurelio Augurello, a commentator on Petrarch; the hypothesis that the Bust of Christ in the Gemäldegalerie may be recognized as a painting mentioned three times in the inventories of Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi, of whom Lorenzo Lotto executed a very famous portrait; the entry into Lotto’s catalog of a beautiful preparatory drawing for theAssumption of the Virgin discovered by Stefano L’Occaso in 2016 and defined by Dal Pozzolo as “one of the very few drawings attributable with certainty to the master’s first phase.” the confirmation to Federico Caldura’s suggestion that, in the Monte San Giusto Crucifixion, even the horses seem to be taking a stand on the divine nature of Jesus; the definitive rejection of the hypothesis that the Repentance of St. Peter from a private collection may be a pendant of a canvas depicting Judas Returns the Thirty Denarii; the idea that the National Trust’s two Samson panels were overlays rather than chests or backs; the reused canvas nature of the Portrait of a Man with a Cloak in the Pinacoteca di Brera; and the confirmation of the attribution to Lorenzo Lotto of the Saint Jerome in the study of the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa.

Doubtful paintings include the Holy Family from the Museo Diocesano in Recanati, which was among the most recent “candidates” to enter Lotto’s catalog. Also doubtful is the Madonna and Child from the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota (although the American museum presents it as autograph) because of the state of preservation that makes it impossible to reason about the degree of autography, as well as the Madonna and Child Sleeping from the Civic Museums of Vicenza, which even in the past has enjoyed the favor of renowned scholars such as Caroli himself: the inclusion among the doubtful paintings is due to the poor state of preservation and the presence of workshop replicas. In the section of copies from lost originals, one unpublished work stands out, namely a Madonna suckling the Child with St. John by a painter from Bergamo active between 1520 and 1530, preserved in the Museo Diocesano in Bergamo; theAllegory of Fraud by David Teniers the Younger, which Dal Pozzolo has also discussed on these pages, which pairs with another work by the same author, anAllegory of Lust from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (this is the “copyist” with the most high-sounding, also the author of a Lamentation preserved in the Louvre, also taken from a work by Lotto). Prominent in closing is another unpublished work, a Madonna and Child with St. John that appeared on the Viennese antiques market in late 2020.

The catalog raisonné concludes with the very rich bibliography, which, as mentioned, gathers more than two thousand five hundred entries, and a handy and useful index of names and works. A unique, up-to-date work that is sure to stand as a milestone in Lorenzo Lotto studies.

General catalog of Lorenzo Lotto's paintings by Enrico Dal Pozzolo published

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