LORENZETTO (LORENZO LOTTI, known as). - Sculptor and architect, born in Florence on 23 June 1490, died in Rome on 15 Dec. 1541. In June 1514 he was commissioned to complete the tomb of Cardinal Forteguerri in S. Jacopo in Pistoia, left unfinished by Verrocchio.
To L. belong the statue of Charity and the figure of the cardinal, unfinished and now in the Civic Museum. In Rome, in 1510, through the intervention of Raffaello, 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, for which designs and suggestions by the Urbinate may perhaps have played a part. With Raffaello da Montelupo as his assistant, he executed the Madonna del Sasso for Raffaello’s tomb in the Pantheon. Other works by him are the Putto above a dolphin in the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the group of the Pietà in S. Maria dell’Anima, and the S. Pietro of Ponte S. Angelo. Direct inspiration from antiquity not infrequently restrains the artist’s spontaneity; but in the statues for S. Maria del Popolo and in the S. Sebastiano in the sacristy of S. Cecilia, attributed to him by A. Venturi, under Raffaello’s influence L. attained effects of rare sensitivity. The Giona, already greatly admired by his contemporaries, is a masterpiece, whereas the Madonna del Sasso already displays a less intense lyricism. As an architect, L. always reveals himself bound to Raffaello’s taste, under whose guidance he executed the ground floor of Palazzo Caffarelli, later Vidoni. The courtyard of Palazzo della Valle is his, where fragments of ancient sculptures and architecture were for the first time employed as decorative motifs.