First-ever exhibition of portraits by the Italian artist Lorenzo Lotto opens in London

The National Gallery is staging the first-ever exhibition of portraits by the Italian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto. Lorenzo Lotto Portraits brings together many of Lotto’s best portraits spanning his entire career from collections around the world. These include such masterpieces as the ‘Bishop Bernardo de‘ Rossi’ (1505) from the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, united with its striking allegorical cover from the National Gallery of Art, Washington; and the monumental altarpiece of ‘The Alms of Saint Antoninus of Florence’ (1540–2) from the Basilica Santi Giovanni e Paulo in Venice coming to the UK for the first time. In this painting Lotto not only inserted portraits of members of the commissioning confraternity, but also, highly unusually, paid poor people to sit for him. Working during a time of profound change in Europe, Lotto was remarkable for depicting a wide variety of middle-class sitters, includ