Lotto, Lorenzo (1480-1557)
Ritratto di uomo (Portrait of a Man, Mercurio Bua)
c.1535
Oil on canvas, 118 x 105 cm
Galleria Borghese, Roma
The character, long believed to be a self-portrait of the artist, is depicted inside a closed environment, the back wall of which is interrupted by a window open onto a landscape where the profile of a city and a chivalric scene can be distinguished. The gentleman, from whose expression a feeling of poignant melancholy emanates, wears a black suit on which his hands take on particular prominence: one, bearing two wedding rings on the little finger, is held at his side; the other, adorned on the thumb with a ring with a cruciform coat of arms on a blue background, rests on a symbolic still life composed of a small pile of rose and jasmine petals among which a small skull stands out. A careful study has allowed us to identify the character as Count Mercurio Bua, of Greek origin, who became leader of the Serenissima and moved with him to Treviso, a city whose profile can be seen against the background of the landscape. The representation of St. George, depicted with the dragon in the landscape, is linked to the Greek origins of the leader, devoted to the Holy Knight. The situation of mourning, recalled by the two wedding rings, the black clothes and the green table cover, a color adopted at the time in such circumstances, is fully reflected in the events of his life, marked by the disappearance of his two wives and two children, of which one, to which the small skull perhaps alludes, generated by his first, beloved wife and lost while still in swaddling clothes. (GB)