Half-length Portrait of a Young Man in Red Robe

Around 1500 a Venetian portrait had a settled form. The sitter was shown at half length behind a stone ledge, close to the viewer, calm and clearly built, the way Giovanni Bellini painted his patrons. Lotto, still in his early twenties, follows that model here almost to the letter. The young man in the red gown sits behind just such a parapet, and on its front is the painter's name in Latin, LAVRENT. LOTVS P., Lorenzo Lotto painted it.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum sees Bellini's lesson in the clear order of form and colour. It also points to something that already belongs to Lotto alone, the folds of the red cloth, which drift away from the vertical and catch the light unevenly. The panel is limewood, about 40 centimetres high, and it has been recorded in the imperial picture gallery in Vienna since 1772.