Ritratto di un uomo di 37 anni

Lorenzo Lotto was the restless outsider of the Venetian Renaissance, always moving between towns, never quite keeping the patrons that Titian held so easily. He painted this man around 1542, at the age of 37, and gave him the inward, faintly uneasy look that runs through Lotto's portraits and sets them apart from the confident grandees of Venice. Small emblems carry the meaning. Ivy, an evergreen, stands for constancy, while a little putto balanced on a set of scales suggests a mind weighing intellect against feeling. Some have wondered whether the sober face is Lotto's own. He ended his life poor, having taken lodging as a lay brother at the holy house of Loreto, painting almost to the last.