Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480 – 1556/57) was an Italian painter, draughtsman, and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school, though much of his career was spent in other north Italian cities. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits. He was active during the High Renaissance and the first half of the Mannerist period, but his work maintained a generally similar High Renaissance style throughout his career, although his nervous and eccentric posings and distortions represented a transitional stage to the Florentine and Roman Mannerists. Overview During his lifetime Lotto was a well-respected painter and certainly popular in Northern Italy; he is traditionally included in the Venetian School, but his independent career actually places him outside the Venetian art scene. He was certainly not as highly regarded in Venice as in the other towns where he worked, for he had a stylistic individuality, even an idiosyncratic style (although it fits within the parametres of High Renaissance painting), and, after his death, he gradually became neglected and then almost forgotten. This oblivion could be attributed to the fact that his works now remain in lesser known churches or in provincial museums. Biography Born in Venice, he worked in Treviso (1503–1506); in the Marche (1506–1508); in Rome (1508–1510); in Bergamo (1513–1525); in Venice (1525–1549); in Ancona (1549), and finally, as a Franciscan lay brother, in Loreto (1549–1556). Apprenticeship Little is known of his training. As a Venetian he was influenced by Giovanni Bellini as he had a good knowledge of contemporary Venetian painting. Though Bellini was doubtless not his teacher, the influence is clear in his early painting Virgin and Child with St. Jerome (1506; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). However, in his portraits and in his early painting Allegory of Virtue and Vice (1505; National Gallery of Art, Washington), he shows the influence of Giorgione's Naturalism. As he grew older his style changed, perhaps evolving, from a detached Giorgionesque classicism, to a more vibrant dramatic setpiece, more reminiscent of his contemporary from Parma, Correggio. Treviso (1503–1506) Lotto soon left Venice, because there the competition for a young painter would have been too great, with established names such as Giorgione, Palma the Elder and certainly with Titian. Nevertheless, Giorgio Vasari mentions in the third part of his book Vite that Lotto was a friend of Palma the Elder. In Treviso, a prospering town within the domain of the republic of Venice, he