# Portrait of a Young Man [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [LOTTO, Lorenzo]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 47 x 37 cm ## Commentary Portrait of a Young Man c. 1526 Oil on canvas, 47 x 37 cm Staatliche Museen, Berlin Curtains are an important iconographical feature in Lotto's work. The motif is adopted from devotional painting, where it often provided a majestically symbolic backdrop for saints or other biblical figures. Since early Christian times, the curtain had been seen as a "velum", whose function was either to veil whatever was behind it, or, by an act of "revelatio", or pulling aside of the curtain, to reveal it. To judge from the curtain which fills most of Lotto's canvas, we may safely conclude that he intends to reveal very little indeed of the "true nature" of his sitter. What he finally does reveal is done with such reserve and discretion as to be barely insinuated. ## Related artworks - [Adoration of the Shepherds]() - [Allegory of Chastity detail\)]() - [Allegory of Chastity \("Maiden's Dream"\)]() - [Allegory of Virtue and Vice \(detail\)]() - [Allegory of Virtue and Vice]() - [Angel Annunciating]() - [Angel of the Annunciation]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() - [Annunciation]() - [Architect]() - [Assumption of the Virgin]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()