oncerned with
actual portraits he is intensely receptive and sensitive to the spirit
of his sitters. He may be said to "give them away," and to take an
almost unfair advantage of his perception. The sick man in the Doria
Gallery looks like one stricken with a death sentence. He knows at least
that it is touch and go, and the painter has symbolised the situation in
the little winged genius balancing himself in a pair of scales. In the
Borghese Gallery is the portrait of a young, magnificently dressed man,
with a countenance marked by mental agitation, who presses one hand to
his heart, while the other rests on a pile of rose-petals in which a
tiny skull is half-hidden. The "Old Man" in the Brera has the hard,
narrow, but intensely sad face of one whose natural disposition has
been embittered by the circumstances of his life, just as that of our
Prothonotary speaks of a large and gentle nature, mellowed by natural
affections and happy pursuits. We smile, as Lotto does, with kindly
mischief at "Marsilio and his Bride;" the broad, placid countenance of
the man is so significantly contrasted with the clever mouth and eyes of
the bride that it does not need the malicious glance of the cupid, who
is fitting on the yoke, to "dot the i's and cross the t's" of their
future. Again, the portrait of Laura di Pola, in the Brera, introduces
us to one of those women who are charming in every age, not actually
beautiful, but harmonious, thoughtful, perfectly dressed, sensible, and
self-possessed, and the "Family Group" in our own gallery holds a
history of a couple of antagonistic temperaments united by life in
common and the clasping hands of children. Lotto does not keep the
personal expression out of even such a canvas as his "Triumph of
Chastity" in the Rospigliosi Gallery. His delightful Venus, one of the
loveliest nudes in painting, flies from the attacking termagant, whose
virtue is proclaimed by the ermine on her breast, and sweeps her little
cupid with her with a well-bred, surprised air, suggestive of the
manners of mundane society.

[Illustration: _Lorenzo Lotto._
PORTRAIT OF LAURA DI POLA.
_Brera._
(_Photo, Anderson._)]

The painter who was thus able to unveil personality had evidently a mind
that was aware of itself, that looked forward to a wider civilisation
and a more earnest and intimate religion. His life seems to have been
one of some sadness, and crowned with only