手持狮爪的绅士肖像

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.