The ''Portrait of a Gentleman with a Lion Paw'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the
Italian High Renaissance painter
Lorenzo Lotto, dating ''c.'' 1524–1525. It is housed in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal do ...
, in
Vienna
en, Viennese
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, registration_plate = W
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, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
.
History
The work's history can be traced from 1679, when it was listed in the collection of
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. Neither the identity of the sitter nor the date the portrait was painted is known, although the work has been assigned to Lotto's early Venetian period, when he carried out commissions for several private patrons.
Description
The work shows a gentleman wearing a rich, fur-lined black coat. He stands in front of a rich red and a green textile background and shows us a gilt lion's paw. His right hand, in a gesture typical of Lotto, touches his heart, showing two valuable rings. The composition and the colors show the influence of
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
, then the most respected painter in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
.
The symbolic meaning of the lion's paw is not clear. It could be an allusion to the subject's name, perhaps Leonino Brambati of
Bergamo
Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como ...
, or a member of the Venetian Zatta family (zatta, in Venetian dialect, means "paw"). It has also been suggested that the lion's paw has masonic significance.
See also
*''
Portrait of Andrea Odoni''
Sources
*
External links
Museum webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Portrait of a Gentleman with a Lion Paw
1527 paintings
Paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum
Paintings in the collection of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria
category:Portraits by Lorenzo Lotto