This man, holding a glove in his left hand, directs a hard stare back at us over his shoulder, as if at a startling and unwelcome intrusion. His direct stare from slightly bloodshot eyes has been interpreted as baleful and even full of bilious rage. Lotto derived the idea of a figure looking over his shoulder from a design by Giorgione, known today through a later version in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Giorgione in turn seems here to have been influenced by the writings and portraits of Leonardo da Vinci. The meticulous realism of Lotto’s technique adds to the immediacy and communicative power of the portrait. The subject’s hand is thinly and freely painted, as is the gleam of his white collar at his neck and through the gap in his detachable sleeve.

Like his fellow Venetians, Lotto did not draw his designs carefully on his painted surfaces; infra-red reflectography reveals no underdrawing here. Adjustments were made once the painting was begun: the man’s head was originally turned a little more to face the viewer, so that he did not glance back as dramatically as he does in the final version; the pupil of his left eye was painted closer to his nose at first, and slightly higher; the position of the hat has also been altered.

As John Shearman has pointed out, it was probably the use of Giorgione’s turning pose that led nineteenth-century scholars to attribute this painting to Giorgione. It was subsequently ascribed to Dosso Dossi, Savoldo, Palma Vecchio, Cariani and Altobello Melone. It was suggested that it was by Lorenzo Lotto in 1942; some art historians accepted this attribution, and the painting was lent to the Royal Academy in 1946 as by Lotto. It is Lotto’s focused directness, his searching precision in capturing his sitter’s features and concentration on particular details such as, in this painting, the bloodshot eyes that seem to confirm the attribution; it can be compared to the double portrait of Agostino della Torre with his son Niccolò of c.1513-16 (National Gallery, London).

The man’s hand in the Royal Collection portrait was always thinly painted, without much form. The loose touch here and in the fur of his coat, the folds of his white chemise are uncharacteristic of Lotto’s style and led Shearman to be cautious in his attribution; yet the free manipulation of paint for the white chemise can be found in his later portraits, for example at neck and cuffs in the Young Man of c.1530 (Accademia, Venice). By this date Lotto’s portraits were generally on a larger format and the sitters three-quarter length, as in the Andrea Odoni of 1527 (Royal Collection). The graduation of light on the background from cool light top left to deep shadow behind the figure, and the shape of his cast shadow, place the portrait later than the National Gallery portrait of della Torre and closer to that of Odoni. Similar effects can also be found in Lotto’s major altarpieces of the early 1520s, such as the Virgin and Child with Saints of 1521 (San Bernardino in Pignolo, Bergamo).

Catalogue entry adapted from The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque, London, 2007