Portrait of a Gentleman with a Lion Paw

Venice in the late 1520s was Titian's city, and every other portraitist worked in his long shadow, Lorenzo Lotto included. You can see Titian's rich colour here, the fur-lined black coat glowing against red and green. But the strange touch is pure Lotto. The gentleman holds up a gilded lion's paw, and nobody knows who he is or why. Lotto loved these small riddles. Historians suspect the paw is a visual pun, a clue to a name like Leo or Leone, or perhaps to the man's trade as a goldsmith. His other hand rests on his chest over two fine rings, a quiet inward gesture Lotto used again and again. By the time the picture surfaces in records, in 1679 in a Habsburg archduke's collection, the man's name was already lost.