LORENZETTO (LORENZO LOTTI, called il). — Sculptor and architect, born in Florence on 23 June 1490, died in Rome on 15 December 1541. In June 1514 he was commissioned to complete the tomb of Cardinal Forteguerri in S. Jacopo in Pistoia, a work left unfinished by Verrocchio.
Lorenzetto is credited with the statue of Charity and the unfinished figure of the cardinal, now in the Civic Museum. In Rome, in 1510, through the intervention of Raphael, he was commissioned to execute the statues for the niches of the Chigi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, as well as the bronze relief of the altar depicting Christ and the Samaritan Woman, for which designs and suggestions by the Urbino master may not have been entirely absent. With Raffaello da Montelupo as his assistant, he executed the Madonna del Sasso for Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon. Other works include the Putto on a Dolphin in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; the group of the Pietà in S. Maria dell’Anima; and St. Peter on Ponte S. Angelo. Direct inspiration from antiquity not infrequently curbs the spontaneity of the artist; yet in the statues for S. Maria del Popolo and in the St. Sebastian in the sacristy of S. Cecilia, attributed to him by A. Venturi, Lorenzetto, under Raphael’s influence, achieves effects of rare sensitivity. The Jonah, long admired by his contemporaries, is a masterpiece, while the Madonna del Sasso already shows a less intense lyricism.
As an architect, Lorenzetto reveals himself consistently bound to Raphael’s taste, under whose guidance he executed the ground floor of the Palazzo Caffarelli (later Vidoni). His is the courtyard of the Palazzo della Valle, where for the first time fragments of ancient sculpture and architecture are employed as decorative motifs.