Lorenzo Lotto  c. 1480–1556/7
NG 699 
Agostino della Torre with his Son Niccolò

Nicholas Penny, 2004

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2004).

c. 1513–16

Oil on canvas, 88 × 71.3 cm

Signed and dated on the chair: L.LOTVS./P. ./[1515]

Support

The measurements given above are those of the stretcher. The original painted area is 85 × 68.2 cm. The canvas is of a very fine tabby weave, lined with glue paste onto a canvas of a similar though less fine weave. Cusping is evident along all four edges of the canvas, and extensive fragments of the original turnover, featuring tacking holes, have been preserved.

Materials and Technique

The canvas was prepared with gesso (calcium sulphate) and a pale grey oil priming composed largely of lead white with some carbon black and yellow pigment.¹ The background was painted in a grey that is similar to the priming below. Some scribbly lines detected on infrared reflectograms above Agostino’s head may be underdrawn feathers for Niccolò’s hat that were never painted, in which case the figure of Niccolò was always intended to be present (see below). The condition of the painting, however, means that it is not certain that these marks represent drawn lines. They could be retouchings to the abraded background.

The table‐cloth is painted with a mixture of lead‐tin yellow (probably ‘type 1’), lead white and verdigris, and with a ‘copper green glaze’ that contains blue‐green verdigris which is undissolved or unreacted, and is now largely discoloured. The lavender‐grey of Agostino’s tunic, which is notably thinly painted, comprises red lake, natural azurite and white lead; it is possible that the red lake has faded to some extent. Analysis by infrared spectroscopy indicates a drying oil medium in the priming and paint layers, perhaps with the addition of resin in the translucent greens of the table‐cloth.

The unusual green tonality of Agostino’s face, like the red rims of his eyes, is surely deliberate. In other respects the treatment of the flesh, the minutely marked lips and the carefully distinguished shadows, are characteristic of the artist’s early portraits – for example, the portrait of a woman of c. 1515 in Dijon. Also typical are the minute highlights in the iris.² It is obvious that Agostino’s cap was once slightly larger and the line of his white collar slightly higher. As discussed below, the whole figure of Niccolò appears to be an addition to the portrait as originally composed, and possibly as originally completed.

In the better‐preserved portions of Niccolò’s beard it is possible to see that the paint was scratched through with a fine point.

Conservation

The painting was probably cleaned and perhaps extensively restored shortly before 1812. It was certainly cleaned and restored by Molteni in Milan in 1859–60 (or later) and then varnished and perhaps ‘repaired’ by Pinti in 1863 (the payment of £10 is dated 4 May). These interventions are further discussed below. The painting was cleaned (probably only superficially) and varnished in 1884. It was ‘polished’ in 1925 and again in December 1936 (by ‘Holder’). It was cleaned and restored during the summer of 1965. The detailed report made on that occasion explains that the mid‐nineteenth‐century overpaint was easily removed: the hard oil over‐painting on Niccolò’s face and hat was removed with a scalpel, under magnification; the similar overpaint on the background and on Niccolò’s gown was removed ‘as far as possible’ with mild solvents, but ‘older repaintings to be found in most areas of the picture were found to be impossible to remove safely as Lotto’s original paint was of such a thin and wash‐like consistency’. The painting was surface‐cleaned in 1993.

Condition

Some parts of the painting are in very poor condition; others are well preserved, and a few very well. Most notable among the latter are the whites: handkerchief, papers and inkwell, each with a black foil (respectively, a fly, writing and spattered ink). More surprisingly, some areas of flesh – notably, much of the face of Agostino – have survived. The chief damage to the painting has been caused by abrasion, which presumably occurred during cleaning and perhaps lining. There are no areas of complete loss except where the canvas has been punctured (in a vertical line from Agostino’s forehead to the left corner of his proper right eye and then horizontally, across his nose). Nevertheless, in some areas significant detail and most of the original modelling have been lost – the shadowed parts of the faces, Agostino’s left cuff, his left hand (excepting thumb and forefinger), the arm of the chair, and, above all, most of the figure of Niccolò. The front of the green tablecloth has lost some of its original glaze, and this gives an excessive prominence to the light on the corner. Agostino’s belt must originally have been black, but this has rubbed off, revealing a plum‐coloured underlayer.

Because of their condition, some parts of the painting are puzzling. For example, the brown object just visible behind Agostino’s left arm, not far below his shoulder, may be part of the raised back of the chair in which he sits, or perhaps part of his son’s jacket or even sword.

The lead‐tin yellow used for the gold ring worn by Agostino and for the book clasps and metal belt‐attachments is well preserved. The thin lights on the clasps on the farther side of the book held by Agostino no longer appear to be attached to the book.

The Restoration of 1965

The shape of the hat falling low over Niccolò’s right brow and the hair covering both of his shoulders were revealed – with some difficulty – during cleaning (fig. 8). They lay below the repainting by Molteni (in this painting, as in most others, relatively easy to remove) recorded in fig. 7, and the remains of the earlier repainting in oil which is recorded by Zancon’s engraving (fig. 6). The forms of Niccolò’s shirt and collar are now simply a somewhat blurred version of the restoration effected by Molteni.

Cecil Gould, in tracing the various changes to Niccolò’s appearance in an article published shortly after the restoration, quotes the restorer’s opinion: ‘certain areas of thick paint – in the darker purple areas of the older man’s robe, the whites of his collar and of the letter and handkerchief in his right hand, in parts of his forehead and in the accents on his red book and of the buckles on his belt – contrasted oddly with the soft and fluid painting round them.’³ The restorer wondered if these were additions made at the time of the ‘pre‐Zancon’ restoration. Gould was obviously sceptical about this, and rightly so.

The Inscriptions

Inscribed indistinctly on the arm of the chair, lower right, are the letters ‘L.LOTVS.P.’, with some numerals below (fig. 2). As Gould noted, the inscription was reinforced, but there is no reason to doubt its authenticity. Unfortunately, it is not possible to distinguish the date even in photographs taken of the inscription in its previous reinforced condition. It was, however, previously recorded as 1515.

On the outer of the two folded papers held by Agostino in his right hand we read the following inscription, in finely penned lettering: ‘Medicorum Esculapio / Joanni Augustino Ber/gomatj:–’, a reference to Aesculapius, the physician god of the ancient Greeks and Romans. On the second paper may be discerned the word ‘Consilium’, followed by a three‐barred H.

On the folded paper resting on the table between the inkwell and Agostino’s shoulder can be read ‘D[omi]no Nicolao de la tur / re nobili bergom[e] / nsi amico sing [ularissi] mo / B[er]gomi’ (‘To my dear friend the nobleman of Bergamo, Niccolò della Torre / Bergamo’). The texts on the two square pieces of paper below the inkwell both feature a siglum resembling a large capital R with the tail crossed, the standard abbreviation for ‘recipe’ at that date – these, then, are prescriptions.⁴ For their contents, see below.

On one of the paper markers projecting from the pile of books on the table we read ‘Zandorn / 157’.

On the paper label attached (?) to the back cover of the bound volume held by Agostino we read ‘Galienus’ (with a large florid Gothic capital G), for Galen, the great medical authority of the ancient world. Some neatly written marginal annotations can be glimpsed on the three visible pages of the book where it is held open by Agostino. For these and a discussion of Galen, see below.

On the table a pile of books is surmounted by one upright volume. A title high on the front cover of this volume may be intended to look like Greek (fig. 1), but no sense can be made of it.⁵

Attribution

The painting is signed by Lotto and there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the signature. The attribution has never been challenged.

The Sitters

The inscription on one of the papers in the elder man’s right hand identifies him as Giovanni Agostino of Bergamo. Agostino della Torre was buried in S. Agostino, Bergamo, and the inscription on his tomb there (which no longer survives) was published by the antiquarian prior of S. Agostino, Donato Calvi, in his Effemeride sagro profana, di quanto di memorabile sia successo in Bergamo of 1676.⁶ The date of the doctor’s death is there given as MDXVL, that is, 1535, but this, as Francesca Cortesi Bosco has demonstrated, must be a mistranscription or misprint for MDXVI (1516). However, there is no reason to doubt that he died on 7 June, nor that he was (or at least, was believed to be) 81 years old, as the inscription also claimed.⁷ The year of death is confirmed as 1516 by manuscript records of Bergamo’s College of Physicians in the [page 55]Biblioteca Civica of Bergamo, cited by Cortesi Bosco. She has further gleaned from these sources the information that Agostino was himself the son of a doctor and was already in practice by 1465.⁸ From 1477 onwards he seldom seems to have been absent from meetings of the college, and in 1510 he was elected prior, an office he held until his death. Gianmario Petrò has noted that although della Torre taught in Padua he had commercial interests in Bergamo, where the family had a ‘spezieria’ (supplying spices, oils, drugs, pigments and chemicals) in Piazza Vecchia, with a special line in vitriol, which was extracted for them nearby in the area of Fucina de Gandellino.⁹ Stella Mary Pearce (Newton)¹⁰ has observed that he wears official or academic dress of the kind found in Carpaccio’s Disputation of Saint Stephen, dated 1514 (Milan, Brera). The belt and the open sleeves suggest high rank. A coat of the same violet‐grey with a similar cut and with white and black showing above the collar is worn by Battista Fiera, physician to the Mantuan court, in the portrait of him by Lorenzo Costa of c. 1507–8 (NG 2083).

The bearded man behind Agostino is identified by the inscription on a piece of paper on the table as Niccolò, the only son of Agostino della Torre. Petrò notes that he married Clara, daughter of the very rich Abondio Longhi, close associate of the great condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni.¹¹ Niccolò is included in a list of prominent citizens belonging to the pro‐Venetian Guelph party, who were to be expelled from Bergamo in 1510 after the Battle of Ravenna, which forced the Venetians to abandon the city they had ruled since 1428. A petition made to the city’s governor by Gerolamo Figino, a Milanese nobleman who was a patient of Agostino’s, saved Niccolò from this punishment. The petition describes Agostino as the most eminent member of his profession in the whole of the Italian peninsula (‘inter Italiae medicos primarius’).¹²

In May 1512 the French took Niccolò to Milan as a hostage, but by October Bergamo was once again under Venetian control and he was elected to the city council. He would then have been thirty years old.¹³ Tax records for that year indicate that, like Lotto, the della Torre lived at S. Michele al Pozzo Bianco, although in 1514 they moved to S. Cassiano, a fact which suggests that they were not greatly inconvenienced by the Spanish occupation of the city between 1513 and 1516. It is in these years that Lotto seems to have inscribed the present portrait.

Venetian control of Bergamo was re‐established conclusively in 1516; Niccolò resumed his position on the council and was active in the political life of the city until his death at the age of 80 in 1563, as were his sons, Ludovico and Alfonso, both of whom practised law. The portrait thus depicts not only an eminent and learned physician but his son, described as ‘nobile’, who was a figure of considerable political importance in Bergamo. Cortesi Bosco also cites the city’s tax returns for 1527, which reveal that Niccolò was one of the richest men in the city. Niccolò was evidently proud of his father’s professional eminence, as is clear from the wording of the will he made in 1562 – a fact which is of considerable significance if it is to be believed that he had his portrait added to that of his father (see below).

In the Descrizione of the Lechi Collection published in Milan in 1837, and even in some early twentieth‐century accounts, Niccolò is described as the brother of Agostino.¹⁴ Giovanni Morelli (1819–1891), the great Italian connoisseur who owned the painting in the mid‐nineteenth century, recorded that it had long been known as ‘due dottori’ or ‘due medici’. Writing to Eastlake on 29 December 1862, he explained that he knew nothing of Niccolò – ‘non so dirle nulla’ – but he was aware that Agostino had ‘enjoyed in his day the highest reputation both at home and abroad’ (‘e in patria e fuori’). He claimed that when the convent of S. Agostino had been suppressed under Napoleon the municipality of Bergamo had salvaged the mortal remains of eminent citizens, and said that Eastlake, if curious to do so, could examine in Bergamo’s Ospedale Maggiore the ‘cadavere imbalsamato’, dressed in a long black robe, of the professor whose portrait from life then hung in the National Gallery in London.¹⁵ Morelli would certainly have known what he was talking about, because he had studied medicine and comparative anatomy at university and was a qualified doctor (although not practising).

The Addition of Niccolò

The idea that the figure of Niccolò must have been added to the composition was first proposed by Morelli in 1880,¹⁶ and Berenson repeated it in his monograph of 1895, observing: ‘No one with a feeling for composition can doubt for an instant that Agostino was intended to be alone on the canvas, as he occupies all of it that a well‐composed single bust ought to occupy, while Niccolò is ungracefully crowded into the background.’¹⁷ Most other scholars have concurred with this judgement, but Banti and Boschetto dismissed it as a ‘concettosa interpretazione’, and Peter Humfrey has recently proposed that, although the compositional solution is awkward, the picture ‘was planned as a double portrait from the beginning’. He suggests that ‘the placing of the son and heir in a plane behind that of the father is eloquently expressive of professional and family lineage’.¹⁸ This may be so, but the older generation generally sees itself as occupying a position behind the younger, and in this case there was no professional descent: Niccolò was not a doctor and yet all the books and papers in the painting refer to medical learning. Humfrey adds that ‘it would have been uncomfortably empty at the right without a second figure, and technical examination has not revealed the previous existence of a feature such as a window on the right that would always have been needed to balance the still‐life on the left’. The emptiness would not, it seems to me, have been uncomfortable, but the upright book propped on top of the pile of three lying flat on the table makes it clear that the background is a wall immediately behind the table, thus defining a space too narrow for Niccolò to occupy it comfortably.

Agostino appears to be standing, but behind him there is a folding armchair (of the kind generally known as a Savonarola chair), the arm of which overlaps his left sleeve. Despite the proximity of this chair, the table on which his right elbow rests seems too high to be used by a seated person for writing at – such high tables are found in other, later [page 56]portraits by the artist, such as that of the guardiano of the Convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in the Museo Civico in Treviso (who is shown writing in a standing position), that of the young man in his study in the Accademia, Venice (who stands by a table turning the pages of a book), or that of Andrea Odoni at Hampton Court (whose elbow rests on a table that is as high as his heart).¹⁹ The vanishing‐point in this portrait is unusually high and the table seems to rise steeply behind the sitter, perhaps to emphasise the apparatus of learning which litters it. This also encourages the beholder to feel that he is standing in the presence of a seated man.

Niccolò seems as large as, if not larger than, his father, although he must be standing not only behind him but behind his chair. This creates an awkwardness which would have been easy to avoid had the figures been planned together. In that case we would also expect Lotto to have contrived some physical or psychological contact between them, such as is found in his other, slightly later double portraits (of married couples).

The question which remains to be settled is that of the date when Niccolò was added. He was 33 in 1516, when his father died, and does not look much older here, so perhaps he was added soon after that event. Stella Mary Pearce (Newton) considers that the shape of the cap and the cut of hair and beard suggest a date of about 1518. Morelli, knowing that Agostino was sometimes in Padua, proposed that Lotto, returning from Venice to Bergamo in that year, stopped at the university city and painted Agostino’s portrait, which he then presented on his arrival in Bergamo to Niccolò, who thereupon had his own portrait added. Berenson adopted this idea, but there is no evidence that Agostino was in Padua at that date (when in fact the university was closed), or indeed that Lotto was in Venice.²⁰

The Prescriptions

As mentioned above, two prescriptions lie on the table, in front of the inkstand. The more prominent has two lines of preliminary text before the R with a crossed tail, the other has at least one. Such a text would be the ‘invocatio’, and the first line on the more prominent prescription may conclude with ‘domini’, in which case it probably opens with ‘In n[omin]e’. The first items on the list of ingredients which are bracketed together (presumably because the same amount of each is required) are, as Kristian Jensen observes, ‘tantalizingly close to being legible’. He proposes that they are ‘sirupi.........’, ‘Rosar[um?]’ and ‘sterco[ris?]’ – that is, ‘of syrup, of roses and of dung’. This last substance was employed in medicine (Dr Jensen points out that roasted pigeon‐droppings – ‘cenere dello stereo del colombo’ – were recommended for the prevention of hair loss and that Galen’s De Simplici Medicina includes chapters on the excrement of wolves, chickens, ducks and crocodiles ) .²¹

Galen and the Annotations

Agostino holds the book in an uncomfortable, perhaps impossible, way, apparently in order to display the annotations that demonstrate his learning. It is the back cover of the book which faces us and yet the title has been stuck to this so that we can identify it. The binding with its five flat bosses can be matched with an existing Venetian binding of c. 1485–90.²² It therefore seems probable that a real book was depicted here, but with the back cover recorded as if it were the front one.²³ We must suppose that once the decision had been reached that the book was to be held in the left hand this reversal would have to take place for it to be identified clearly as being by Galen. Similar licence was taken by the sculptor of the monument to Giacomo Surian, the distinguished physician from Rimini, which was erected between 1488 and 1493 in S. Stefano, Venice, where a pair of books are identified on their front and back covers, respectively, as being by Aristotle and Galen.²⁴ If Agostino della Torre’s book is a printed one, it is likely to be the Latin edition of Galen’s works printed in Venice in 1490,²⁵ in which the author is referred to throughout as ‘Galienus’; although the book is somewhat larger, it is of an equivalent thickness.²⁶ Three successive annotated pages of the book are partially visible and some of the annotations on the one nearest to us are legible. The uppermost reads ‘Antrax’ for anthrax, a carbuncle or black boil; the second, ‘de flegm[one] / in epati[cos]’, thus concerning phlegmon, or inflammation; and the third hepatic, pertaining to the liver. Dr Jensen, to whom this reading is due, observes that: The two aspects of phlegmon‐related diseases are discussed, in close proximity and in that order, in the ‘Tractatus secundus ad Glauconem’, and in the 1490 edition of Galen the discussion occurs, as here, on the left‐hand column of the verso of a leaf, and towards the end of the volume. The content of the more visible prescription may be relevant to these annotations since sheep or cow dung was sometimes prescribed as a remedy for complaints related to spleen.²⁷ It may be that the sitter was a specialist in this area of medicine, or was himself afflicted with such complaints.

Galen (AD 131– c. 200), who had been one of the greatest medical authorities under the Roman empire, reassumed this status in Western Europe during the eleventh century, when his works were reintroduced from Arabic. Towards the close of the fifteenth century there was a new interest in his original Greek texts and in translating them into Latin. During the sixteenth century Galen was the subject of intense philological enquiry, of which the editing of the Aldine Galen of 1525 in Greek was a major episode, but by no means the climax. Moreover, those who, like Vesalius (1504–1564), challenged Galen’s authority often appealed to other ancient sources (notably Hippocrates) and ‘although anatomists in general after Vesalius rejected Galenic anatomy, there was no similar wholesale abandonment of Galenic physiology, still less of his therapeutics’.²⁸ Indeed, from 1586 until the late eighteenth century at Bologna, the oldest of European universities, ‘one text alone was permitted in the teaching of surgery – Galen’.²⁹

Doctors: Portraits and Status

Portraits of eminent members of a profession which make explicit reference to that profession are neither common nor rare in sixteenth‐century Italy. There is a portrait by Bernardino Licinio of Francesco Fileto with papers and a book (Genoa, Galleria del Palazzo Rosso), probably of the second decade of the sixteenth century, which is inscribed ‘Franc. Philetus / Doctor’ on the parapet.³⁰ There is also a portrait in the Prado, signed by Lucia Anguissola ‘adolescens’, of the Cremonese doctor Pietro Manna with some heavy books and a snake wound around his walking stick, in allusion to the staff of Aesculapius.³¹ A shorter version of such a snake‐wrapped staff is held, together with a branch of laurel in the right hand (resting on a ledge), by the man depicted in a bust‐length portrait, probably of the early 1550s and attributed to Gaspare Pagani, in the Johnson Collection in the Museum of Art, Philadelphia.³² This doctor’s dress is very like that of Agostino, and he has the same lace at the collar and a prominent signet ring. There is at least one other case in which the sitter’s medical learning seems to be as explicitly advertised as it is in Lotto’s portrait of Agostino. A portrait in a private collection, recently attributed to Giovanni Battista Trotti, depicting a man studying the 1568 edition of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Discorsi… nelle sei Libri di Pedacio Dioscuride Anazarbeo della materia medicinale open at wood engravings of two herbs, is likely to represent a Cremonese physician who is cited in that very publication, Giovanni Battista Olivi.³³ Lotto also painted a portrait of Gian Giacomo Stuer, a surgeon, and his son in March 1544 (now in the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia) – the surgical instruments close to the son’s hand will perhaps one day be his to wield.³⁴ Surgeons were, however, not physicians.

Agostino’s social status is clearly reflected in the monument to him which we know to have been erected. This can be matched in Venice by the very prominent tomb in S. Stefano of Giacomo Surian, mentioned in the previous section, and earlier by that of Bartolomeo Lamberti in Brescia. Lamberti, who died in 1457, is described as a count in the epitaph erected by his son Tommaso in the church of S. Domenico (now in the Museo Civico, Santa Giulia), although Tommaso himself was only raised to noble status in 1479. He is also said to have combined the merits of Cato and Hippocrates.³⁵ The huge reputation that could be enjoyed by a university professor is most dramatically demonstrated by the career of Girolamo della Torre (1444–1506) at Padua University – and by the tomb executed by Riccio in San Fermo, Verona, the bronze reliefs from which are in the Louvre.³⁶

The Fly on the Handkerchief

The fly settled on Agostino della Torre’s handkerchief, very like the one similarly placed in Sebastiano del Piombo’s group portrait of slightly later date (Washington, National Gallery of Art), is a startling piece of realism which, since it is close [page 59][page 60]to the front plane of the painting, encourages the fiction that a fly has flown in from ‘our’ world (fig. 5). In other paintings the artist intended to create the illusion that the fly had settled on the surface of the picture (this is certainly the case with Carlo Crivelli’s Saint Catherine, NG 907.1). In fact, the painting of flies and their shadows was a demonstration of the magical power of painting. It has been proposed that Lotto here reveals a special debt to Netherlandish art, and perhaps also to Dürer, who included a fly in his Madonna of the Rosegarlands (Prague, National Gallery), but more examples are found in Italian paintings from the half‐century before Lotto’s painting than on pictures painted elsewhere in Europe.³⁷ A fly is a difficult model for an artist and the fact that it has only briefly alighted adds a certain suspense to the picture. Moreover, the fly’s role in the transmission of disease gives its presence in a portrait of a sickly physician a poignancy which Lotto cannot have intended but which it is hard for us to brush off.

The Inkstand

The white inkstand, presumably of enamelled metal or ceramic, seems to be without parallel among surviving examples, but a similar one is included in a portrait by Moroni, so it was perhaps of a type manufactured in Bergamo.³⁸

Previous Owners and Acquisition by Eastlake

The National Gallery’s painting – itself a document of some interest for students of the turbulent political history of Lombardy in the early sixteenth century – emerged from obscurity nearly two centuries later when the interests of invading powers from north of the Alps again disrupted the region. According to Morelli, writing to Eastlake on 29 December 1862, within the lifetime of Conte Teodoro Lechi (1778–1866), the painting had been purchased by Lechi in 1812 from the della Torre family, who had preserved it in their palace in Bergamo (via Donizetti, 5), since the sixteenth century. (A survey of Lechi’s collection can be found on pp. 381–2.)

No documentation survives to support Morelli’s claim that the picture was acquired in 1812, and it is known that Lechi destroyed most of the records pertaining to the formation of his collection. However, the painting was included among the reproductions engraved by Gaetano Zancon (1771–1816) for his Galleria inedita raccolta da privati gabinetti Milanesi ed incisa in rame published in Milan in 1812. Conte Fausto Lechi, who searched in his family records on the Gallery’s behalf, found no indication of the exact date of acquisition.³⁹ Morelli knew that it had been cleaned and restored for Lechi by ‘Speri’ of Brescia⁴⁰ and this is likely to have been done before Lechi authorised the reproduction, which suggests that the purchase may have been made slightly before 1812. On the other hand, Morelli clearly had obtained detailed information, probably from Lechi himself, since he also mentions that Lechi paid ‘credo, 112 Luigi d’oro’,⁴¹ a high price by his standards.

The double portrait was no. 81 in the catalogue of Lechi’s collection, made in Milan in 1814, and no. 44 in the catalogue of 1826, made after the collection was moved to Brescia. Although not specified in Brognoli’s Nuova guida of 1826, the painting was presumably displayed in a special room of the palace that was devoted to portraiture. In Alessandro Sala’s guide to the Pitture ed altri oggetti di belle arti di Brescia of 1834 it is listed among the masterpieces of the collection.⁴² Lechi sold it in Milan on 31 May 1847 to the Hungarian chamberlain of the Austrian emperor, Count Samuel von Festetits, for 6,800 Milanese lire (320 gold napoleons in one account, 300 in another), together with a portrait by Francia formerly attributed to Raphael (8,000 lire) and a Moroni of a married couple kneeling before the Virgin and Saint Michael (6,000 lire).⁴³

Festetits (or Festetics in Hungarian – his name is spelled with bewildering variety by his Western European contemporaries) belonged to an eminent Hungarian noble family.⁴⁴ He seems to have started collecting old master paintings, drawings and prints around the time of his marriage to Vanda Raczyuska in 1842, assisted by Joseph Daniel Böhn (1794–1865), medallist, gem‐engraver and collector, and by the dealer Georg Plach (d. 1885). He was probably the most active collector in Vienna of old masters in the mid‐century, and was, with Alexander Barker, one of the first to descend on the Manfrin Collection when it was clear that it would be broken up.

Although Festetits seems not to have died until 1862, his collections were sold in 1859, with sales advertised for 7 March and 11 April.⁴⁵ The second of these was cancelled when Plach purchased all the lots. He may have done so with Friedrich Jaka Gsell (1812–1871), another Viennese dealer who had more than forty of Festetits’s paintings in his stock.⁴⁶ Plach’s catalogue of the 162 paintings indicates that the Lotto, no. 142, was acquired by ‘Henking’. But by September 1859 the painting was with Molteni, painter, restorer and director of the Brera. It was inspected in Milan by Eastlake, who retained Molteni as a consultant. Eastlake regarded it as ‘ineligible’ – ‘very opaque, heavy & indifferent’.⁴⁷ It was in fact owned by Molteni’s friend Morelli, according to whose notes it cost 124 gold napoleons, so ‘Henking’ may have been an agent, or a pseudonym.

In September 1862 Eastlake saw the painting again, now restored and in Morelli’s home in Bergamo, Morelli himself being absent. He made an offer of 400 gold napoleons (£320), which Morelli on 18 October felt unable to refuse.⁴⁸ Morelli was slow to confirm this, however, doubtless because, as he explained, he was busy (he had been elected to the new Camera dei Deputati as representative of Bergamo in 1860), but also perhaps because he was reluctant to let the painting out of his own collection – and out of Bergamo. However, he finally replied on 29 December, telling Eastlake that he would sign the receipt on his return to Milan and consign the picture in person to the shipping agents Buffet and Bembo by 11 January 1863.⁴⁹

In answer to Eastlake’s enquiry as to whether he wished his name to appear in the Gallery’s annual report, Morelli wrote: ‘I know only too well [so purtroppo] that I am not behaving in too patriotic a manner by severing from its own homeland [il proprio paese] a masterpiece such as this picture of Lotto’s that I have ceded to you – but seeing as [giacchè] the blame [la colpa] is mine no one else must take the punishment.’

Jaynie Anderson observes that Morelli’s decision to sell is ‘surprising’ in view of the campaign that he had already begun to prevent the export of major works of art from Italy. (Indeed, Morelli made no secret of his attempt to prevent Eastlake from exporting a Crivelli altarpiece at the same date.) However, since Morelli’s ownership of the painting was not a secret, prudence alone would have prevented him from any concealment – for he could defend himself more easily from a charge of inconsistency than from one of hypocrisy.

Anderson considers that ‘the most charitable explanation, and I believe the correct one, would be that Morelli wished to take the credit for popularizing Bergamesque art abroad’. And she notes that Lotto was a painter ‘otherwise unknown outside Italy at this date’.⁵⁰ As indicated earlier, this was not the case; all the same, it is surely true that Morelli was pleased to promote, and to be seen to promote, Lotto’s reputation.

Another explanation for the sale does, however, suggest itself, namely that Morelli did not regard the picture as a true masterpiece, but rather as a fine portrait that Lotto himself had damaged. For the fact is, as noted above, that Morelli was the first scholar to observe that the portrait was probably not originally intended as a double portrait. He may have hoped that Molteni would discover that the second figure had not been painted by Lotto at all and would easily be cleaned away. Morelli’s notes on the painting, which Frizzoni published in 1896, clearly state that Niccolò’s portrait is an addition, and it seems likely that these notes were made when Morelli sold the picture.⁵¹

The Transformation of the Painting in the Nineteenth Century

Zancon’s line engraving of the painting has already been mentioned. Zancon was a careful draughtsman whose reproductions are highly reliable. We may therefore feel sure that in 1812 Niccolò della Torre was depicted as wearing a large‐rimmed hat presumably of a different colour to distinguish it from Agostino’s. He also had shorter hair, a raised collar and a differently cut coat. Cortesi Bosco has argued that Zancon’s plate is in effect a reproduction of the ‘original painting’.⁵² She assumes, however, that it shows the painting as it had been passed down through the generations of the della Torre family, whereas it is surely more likely (as argued above) that it was cleaned and restored for Lechi before he authorised the engraving and it may also have been restored prior to that. In any case, restoration of the painting in 1965 revealed that much less of Niccolò’s forehead was originally shown (fig. 8), and much more of his hair than can be seen in Zancon’s print (fig. 6). It is impossible now to disprove the theory that Lotto himself made the changes shown by Zancon, but it seems most unlikely.

Cortesi Bosco is surely right to ask whether such a rimmed hat would have been added to the painting at a later date. Its very oddity argues against this: it is unlike the headwear favoured for gentlemen in portraiture at any period between the mid‐sixteenth century and the present day. Very broad hats can be found in some paintings of the 1520s, most notably the portrait attributed to Dosso Dossi in the Kress Collection at Wichita, Kansas, cited by Cortesi Bosco, and also [page 62]the Knight of Saint John in the National Gallery (NG 932),⁵³ but they are different in structure from that seen in Zancon’s engraving.

Eastlake’s description of the painting in September 1859 (see above) suggests that Molteni had not advanced very far with cleaning, let alone restoration. The extensive changes that he made in the months that followed can be seen in old National Gallery photographs (fig. 7). The hat became a cap rather like that worn by Castiglione in Raphael’s portrait in the Louvre (a well‐known painting which could be dated with confidence to the middle years of the second decade of the sixteenth century). The coat has been extended to the left, covering up much of the tunic and collar but keeping the shirt with its numerous little pleats and yoke below. These were not simply arbitrary changes intended to make Niccolò’s presence in the composition appear less obtrusive and his dress less bizarre. It seems likely that they were stimulated at least partly by some explorations below the upper layers of the painting. The result, however, was the falsification of an old master for the sake of making it more agreeable to a modern public.

Neither Molteni nor Eastlake objected to this approach, and it is possible to document numerous examples in the National Gallery of flagrant ‘improvements’ made by Molteni on paintings acquired for the Gallery by Eastlake. Furthermore, Eastlake actually envisaged such improvements when making notes of pictures he might acquire – thus, for instance, Christ’s expression in the Holy Family in the Lochis Collection ‘might be remedied’.⁵⁴ However, the painting belonged to Morelli, who, although he admired Molteni, regarded the restorer’s attitude to the old masters as compromised by his own academic training as a painter. In a letter to Sir Henry Layard of 3 January 1864 Morelli couples Molteni and Eastlake (for Eastlake was also an accomplished painter) as sometimes striving to improve upon the ‘naïves incorrections des anciens maîtres … cette naïve “disinvoltura” du génie’.⁵⁵ From this it is clear that Morelli would not normally have encouraged Molteni to make ‘improvements’ of this kind.

They were perhaps a consequence of Morelli’s perception that the figure of Niccolò was an addition (see above). He may surely have wondered at first whether it was an addition by another artist. Molteni would have pointed out that there was a good deal of relatively modern paint, perhaps prompting Morelli, in the expectation of retrieving the original, to sanction its removal, but, when harder paint was found, he ordered Molteni to stop and allowed him to cover his tracks as best he could. One Italian commentator considered that Molteni had treated the picture ‘barbaramente’⁵⁶ and it is easy to believe that Morelli was not proud of the episode.

Eastlake, on the other hand, was not only unperturbed by what Molteni had done but apparently eager to go further, for Raffaelle Pinti in London was paid £10 in May 1863 for work on the painting. This must have been for the varnish, which on analysis turned out to be slightly tinted, but also, presumably, for other minor repairs (varnishing would not have cost so much). An analogous case is that of the Virgin and Child Embracing by Sassoferrato (NG 740), sent from Venice at the close of 1864. Eastlake warned Wornum that it might require ‘a little patina before it is put up’, and the degree was determined by him and Pinti after they had viewed the picture in the Gallery.⁵⁷

Preparatory Drawing

One of relatively few surviving drawings attributed to Lotto is a male head in the Gabinetto dei Disegni of the Uffizi (1876F). There has been little agreement as to either the date of the drawing or the purpose it was intended to serve, but it has sometimes been related to the portrait of Niccolò in the National Gallery.⁵⁸ The shape of the nose is similar but the moustache is more flowing, the eyebrows are lower and the cap is different in character to any that have so far made an appearance on Niccolò’s head.

Provenance

See above. Conte Teodoro Lechi by 1812; sold to Count Samuel von Festetits in 1847; his sale, 12 May 1859, where bought by ‘Henking’; Giovanni Morelli by September 1859; purchased by the National Gallery October 1862.

Print

Engraved by Gaetano Zancon after his own drawing, 1812 (fig. 6). See above (a, b).

Exhibitions and Loans

York, March–April 1979, City Art Gallery ; Nottingham, April–June 1979, City Museum and Art Gallery ; Gloucester, June–July 1979, City Museum and Art Gallery ; Preston, July–August 1979, Harris Museum and Art Gallery ; Bergamo 2001, Accademia Carrara .

Framing

The painting has a seventeenth‐century Italian frame of poplar densely carved with an olive wreath at the sight edge, a convex frieze of egg and chain ornaments and an outer moulding of bead and fillet (each bead flanked by a bud‐shaped ornament). The painting was given this frame on 1 January 1964. It had probably been acquired during the previous year and had been altered for the painting (the rosette corners suggest this). The frame has been heavily regilded with oil gilding.

Notes