That Lotto, who was one of the most productive painters of his time, could work for thirty years without succumbing to the mighty influence of Titian's sumptuous colour, is explained by the fact that during these years he was away from Venice, as is abundantly proved by documents and by the evidence of signed and dated works. The first of these documents, dated 1503, proves him to have lived at Treviso at this period. His earliest authentic pictures, Sir Martin Conway's "Danaë" (about 1498) and the "St Jerome" of the Louvre (a similar subject is at the Madrid Gallery ascribed to Titian), as indeed all the works executed before 1509, have unmistakable Vivarinesque traits in the treatment of the drapery and landscape, and cool grey tonality. To this group belong the Madonnas at Bridgewater House, Villa Borghese, Naples, and Sta Cristina near Treviso, the Recanati altarpiece, the "Assumption of the Virgin" at Asolo, and the portrait of a young man at Hampton Court. We find him at Rome between 1508 and 1512, at the time Raphael was painting in the Stanza della Signatura. A document in the Corsini library mentions that Lotto received 100 ducats as an advance payment for fresco-work in the upper floor of the Vatican, but there is no evidence that this work was ever executed. In the next dated works, the "Entombment" at Jesi (1512), and the "Transfiguration," "St James," and "St Vincent" at Recanati, Lotto has abandoned the dryness and cool colour of his earlier style, and adopted a fluid method and a blonde, joyful colouring. In 1513 we find him at Bergamo, where he had entered into a contract to paint for 500 gold ducats an altarpiece for S. Stefano. The picture was only completed in 1516, and is now at S. Bartolommeo. From the next years, spent mostly at Bergamo, with intervals in Venice and Jesi in the Marches, date the Dresden "Madonna," "Christ taking leave of his Mother" at the Berlin Gallery, the "Bride and Bridegroom" at Madrid, the National Gallery "Family Group" and portrait of the Protonothary Giuliano, several portraits in Berlin, Milan and Vienna, numerous altarpieces in and near Bergamo, the strangely misnamed "Triumph of Chastity" at the Rospigliosi Palace in Rome, and the portrait of Andrea Odoni at Hampton Court. In 1526 or 1527 Lotto returned to Venice, where Titian ruled supreme in the world of art; and it was only natural that the example of the great master should have fired him to emulation, though his experiments in this direction were confined to an attempt at rivalling the master's rich and ruddy colour-schemes. Even in the Carmine altarpiece, the "St Nicholas of Bari," which is his nearest approach to Titian, he retained his individualized, as opposed to Titian's generalized, expression of emotion. But it was only a passing phase, and he soon returned to the cooler schemes of his earlier work. Among his chief pictures executed in Venice between 1529 and 1540 are