Portrait of a Young Man with a Lamp

Lotto painted this around 1508, during his years in Treviso, a small city on the Venetian mainland where he worked for the local bishop's circle. Look past the young man's pale, sharply observed face and you'll notice something odd in the dark on the right: a small oil lamp, still burning, half hidden behind a curtain. Nobody is certain what it means. Lotto liked to bury private clues in his portraits, little puzzles only the sitter and his friends would read. The white cloth behind the figure is woven with thistles, and one guess is that the thistle points to the sitter's name. He gives you every crease and imperfection of the skin, then leaves the one clear symbol unexplained, glowing quietly in the corner.