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Lorenzo Lotto VENICE CIRCA 1480 - 1556 LORETO PORTRAIT OF AN ARCHITECT oil on canvas 86.5 x 117 cm.; 34 x 46 in.

One of the outstanding painters of his generation, Lotto made the greatest contribution in the genre of portraiture, with works that in their presentation are among the most inventive and expressive of the first half of the sixteenth century. This work – a recently discovered addition to Lotto's œuvre – is one of some forty-odd surviving portraits, nearly all of which are now in public collections. It is remarkable for the sparseness of its composition and is characteristic of the painter insofar as pose and expression are used to break with conventions in portraiture, with the sitter engaging directly with the viewer as if in conversation. Probably painted in the 1540s, it would appear to depict an architect who was identified as the great Venetian Jacopo Sansovino when it was acquired in 1827 by the ancestor of the present owner, then with an attribution to Titian.