HORTUS CONCLUSUS. LA SACRA FAMIGLIA LAURETANA DI LORENZO LOTTO
HORTUS CONCLUSUS. THE HOLY FAMILY OF LORETO BY LORENZO LOTTO

Summary/Abstract: The contribution is an excerpt from Dalla parte di Lorenzo Lotto. Il ciclo lauretano (On the Side of Lorenzo Lotto: The Loreto Cycle), an essay to be completed soon on the pictorial cycle which Lorenzo Lotto (Venice, 1480-Loreto, 1556) ordered in 1555 in the chapter chapel of the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. This is the painter’s last work for a public destination; due to the difficulties in providing a unitary and coherent interpretation, the cycle risks being expunged from Lotto’s catalogue despite the indication made both by Giorgio Vasari in the 1568 edition of the Vite (Lives) and by Carlo Ridolfi in 1648 in Le Meraviglie dell’arte: ovvero Le vite degl’illustri pittori veneti (The Wonders of Art: The Lives of the Illustrious Venetian Painters). Of the seven works making up the cycle, the Holy Family is one of the five painted before 1550, some of which had to be adapted to harmonize their format. The painter intervened on the Holy Family in order to adapt the content of the painting, originally intended for domestic devotion, and make it suitable for the new destination.

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