The name of Lorenzo Lotto is recorded by Vasari and elsewhere, in which accounts his country is considered as consisting of the entire state, as he himself, indeed, affixed to his picture of S. Cristoforo di Loreto, _Laurentius Lottus Pictor Venetus_.[43] The late annotator of Vasari, observing the grace of countenance and the turn of the eyes remarkable in his pictures, supposed him to be a disciple of Vinci, an opinion that might be supported by the authority of Lomazzo, who mentions the names of Cesare da Sesto and Lorenzo Lotto together, both being imitators, in the distribution of their lights, of da Vinci. Lotto most likely profited by his vicinity to Milan, in order to cultivate an acquaintance with, and to imitate Vinci in many points; though I am not, therefore, inclined to discredit the account which gives him for a pupil to Bellini, and a rival to Castelfranco. But the style of the disciples of Lionardo, so uniform in Luini and in the other Milanese, is very slightly perceptible in the productions of Lotto. His manner is, in truth, wholly Venetian, bold in its colours, luxurious in its draperies, and like Giorgione, of a deep red in the fleshy parts. His hand, however, is less bold and free than that of the latter, whose loftier character he is fond of tempering with the play, as it were, of his middle tints; selecting, at the same time, lighter forms, to whose heads he gives a character more placid and a beauty more ideal. In the background of his pictures he often retains a peculiar clear or azure colour, which if it do not harmonize so much with the figures, confers distinctness on each individual, and presents them in a very lively manner to the eye. His pictures of S. Antonino, at the Dominicans in Venice, and of S. Niccolo, at the Carmine, which design he repeated in the S. Vincenzio of the Dominicans at Recanati, are compositions extremely novel and original. In his others he varies little from the usual style; that of a Madonna seated on a throne, surrounded with saints, with cherubs in the air, or upon the steps. Yet these he relieves by the novelty of perspective, or by attitudes, or contrasted views. Thus in his specimen of the S. Bartolommeo, at Bergamo, entitled by Ridolfi wonderful, he bestows upon the Virgin and the infant Jesus such finely diversified and contrasted motions, that they seem as if conversing with the holy bystanders, the one on the right and the other on the left hand. And in that of S. Spirito, sparkling as it were with graces, we meet with a figure of S. John the Baptist, drawn as a child, standing at the foot of the throne, in the act of embracing a lamb, and expressing so natural and lively a joy, at once so simple and innocent, with a smile so beautiful, that we can hardly believe while we gaze upon it, that Raffaello or Correggio could have gone beyond it.