| Lorenzo Lotto introduced the genre of marriage and family portraiture into Italy and pioneered a pictorial phenomenon that continued for centuries. In this study I focus on Lotto's Portrait of Marsilio and Faustina Cassotti in the Prado Museum and his portrait of an unknown couple located in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg referred to as the Double Portrait. I propose alternative readings for the images based on sixteenth-century popular literature, marriage practices, and an understanding of domestic structures which privileged the role of women. My goal is to enrich our understanding of these important paintings and to suggest that multiple levels of meaning coexist. On one level, the portraits represent doctrinal ideals of marriage, as scholars have suggested. I offer yet another level of meaning, a vision of matriarchal authority in the Renaissance household. |
