LORENZETTO (Lorenzo Lotti, called Il). - Sculptor and architect, b. in Florence on 23 June 1490, d. in Rome on 15 Dec. 1541. In June 1514 he was commissioned to complete the tomb of Card. Forteguerri in S. Jacopo at Pistoia, left unfinished by Verrocchio.
The statue of Charity and the figure of the cardinal, unfinished and now in the Museo civico, belong to L. In Rome, in 1510, through the intervention of Raphael, he was commissioned to make the statues for the niches of the Chigi chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, and the bronze relief of the altar with Christ and the Samaritan Woman, in which drawings and suggestions by the Urbinate are perhaps not absent. With Raphael da Montelupo as his assistant, he executed the Madonna del Sasso for the tomb of Raphael in the Pantheon. Other works by him are the Putto on a Dolphin in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, the group of the Pietà in S. Maria dell'Anima, the St. Peter of Ponte S. Angelo. Direct inspiration from antiquity not rarely curbs the artist's spontaneity: but in the statues for S. Maria del Popolo and in the St. Sebastian of the sacristy of S. Cecilia, attributed to him by A. Venturi, under the influence of Raphael L. attains effects of rare sensitivity. The Jonah, already much admired by his contemporaries, is a masterpiece, while the Madonna del Sasso already shows a less intense lyricism. As an architect L. reveals himself always 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 sculptures and architecture find employment as decorative motifs.
Bibliography2 works
Eugenio Battisti