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Notes
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Lotto wrote in his account book that he gave a painting on 23 September 1547 to ‘Giovanni della Volta, my landlord’. He describes it as ‘a painting with his portrait from life and that of his wife with two children, altogether comprising four figures’. The portrait may have been painted in lieu of rent. The family is gathered around a table covered with an elaborately patterned Turkish carpet. The mother offers cherries from the silver bowl to her daughter while the animated little boy reaches up on one leg for a pair of cherries dangled from his father’s hand. The barren lagoon landscape may have symbolic significance or simply suggest a view through an upstairs window. There is no other known portrait by Lotto of a married couple and two children – such portraits were unusual in early sixteenth-century Italy.
Title
Portrait of Giovanni della Volta with his Wife and Children
Date
completed 1547
Medium
Oil on canvas
Measurements
H 104.5 x W 138 cm
Accession number
NG1047
Acquisition method
Bequeathed by Miss Sarah Solly, 1879
Work type
Painting
The National Gallery, London
Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England
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