Studio: international art (5.1895)

Lorenzo Lotto

But it is to the chronological classification of of his own ? " As these questions are answered in
Lotto's works that we must devote the space that picture after picture, we see the personality of the
remains, for it is here we see the peculiar value artist (in so far as he was an artist—with the gossip
of the new method of art criticism to which I have about him as a man we have nothing to do), un-
given the name of psychological. The classification folding itself, until in the end, having noted just
depends, of course, upon the most minute com- what he absorbs of the various influences brought to
parison, point by point, of the undated works with bear on him, and what he leaves untouched, how
those which happen to be actually dated, or whose his own vision of the world changes and grows from
year is known from documents or other collateral year to year along with his power of expressing it,
evidence. A master's works are often found to having thus followed him step by step we begin to
divide themselves naturally into groups : thus we feel that we know his character as an artist,
hear about the "early," "middle," and "last It is thus that Mr. Berenson has proceeded with

Lotto. He finds him at first,
as compared with his contem-
poraries, Giorgione, Titian, and
Palma, timid and archaic in
treatment, and more religious
in spirit, as befitted a pupil of
the conservative school of
Murano. But even these early
works, in the expressiveness of
the figures and the penetrating
interpretation of individuals
and situations—characteristics
which clearly mark off Lotto
from all his contemporaries—
already indicate the peculiar
bent of his genius In the
pictures which follow, with
their violent modifications of
style under the influence first
of Raphael and then of Palma,
and their sudden swing back
to the manner of Alvise
Vivarini, Lotto's early master,
his critic traces the working of
a temperament extraordinarily
sensitive to influence, pulled
out of its own orbit by the
"study of head" by m. l newill attraction of other great artists

but ill at ease in the unfamiliar

manner " of a painter. And this is where the path (these pictures are his least happy), and only
subject has been left—in the rare cases when it successful again when he returns to his old habits,
has been carried so far ! But this is nothing but With the exceptions of an occasional experiment
the material, sorted and ready for use, but still, so in the colour scheme and medium of Titian, Lotto
to speak, in the rough, for the reconstruction of after this pursues his own way so independently
the painter's artistic personality. The psycho- of his fellow-artists that it would be a matter of
logical criticism now comes in with its inquiry at surprise if the scanty records of his life and the
every step : " Why did he paint in this way at this presence of his works in out-of-the-way places did
time ? What habits acquired from his master does not inform us that he spent most of his time not
each picture reveal ? What later influences ? And, in Venice among other artists, but in the provinces,
above all, what power on the part of the artist to chiefly in Bergamo and the Marches, where he
observe for himself, interpret the world afresh, came in contact with no one sufficiently his equal
express personal emotions, and invent a technique to cause any modification in his style.

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