Marsilio Cassotti and his Wife Faustina by Lorenzo Lotto, 1523. Recorded live on January 12, 2023
hello and welcome back to The Prado Museum here in Madrid Spain for more of our Wednesday series of short conversations in English today we’re in room 41 at the end room 41 is dedicated to Phoenician portraiture so we’re here with wonderful paintings dietitian inviting Toretto and other painters and today we’re going to be looking at one painting by Lorenzo Lotto that’s called The Marriage of meisser marcilio casady and faustina asanika nalato was born around 1480 in Venice and this makes him a contemporary optician although his style maybe separates him a little bit from the Venetian school because he moved around a lot during his career he worked in in Rome in Bergamo and Treviso and in other places and this makes his style really a unique mix of a lot of different influences it really gives him his own personal language So today we’re going to see some of that personal style and also see why some have even called him the very first modern artist now it wasn’t Bergamo especially after 1521 that Lotto began to produce some of his best portraits in Bergamot there was an up-and-coming wealthy Merchant class of our portrait art patrons that supported lotto and maybe because of their aspirations for social Ascension they were willing to pay a generous price and also were open to new pictorial ideas like like this like lotto’s proposal for marriage portraits that were more similar of a northern type of marital portrait with this horizontal format with both bride and groom full of symbolism that speaks both of social status and also of marriage so in this painting we see mice or marcilio casady the groom he’s a member of a family of wealthy textile merchants and faustina a Sonica the bride she’s a member of a local Noble family so this Union would have meant a social success for the casadis securing their position in an ability marrying into the nobility with this with this Union and the emphasis on the richness of the textiles and all of the details in the jewelry really drives home this idea the casadis um they were a family that often looked to our patronage also as a way to visually exhibit their wealth and their social position and not just in the image that they depicted but also in the fact of of promoting art itself an art patronage itself this is a way that the wealthy could could imitate habits and customs of of the nobility and now we’re going to see some of the symbols in the painting because this painting is full of not just richness and details of the textiles and jewelry but also in symbols related to marriage and first we have cupid cupid is uh of course known for his association with desire and love he was Eros to the Greeks keep it to the Romans and he’s looking over this couple um smiling with a curious smile directly at marcillio but we’ll come back to his smile in a little bit um cupid is placing this yolk this is what we see here this this stick that he has behind the couple he’s placing a joke on the shoulders of the young couple and this is a representation of the obligations and the work that is involved in making a marriage successful and around it we see these little bits of moral and Laurel was a symbol of fidelity among spouses success and also a virtue and Lotto is painting a very specific moment in the ceremony right when marcelia was about to place the ring on faustina’s hand and of course he’s holding the ring finger now the ring finger has been associated with love and marriage for centuries actually because of a theory from the 6th Century that there was a vein in the third finger that led directly to the heart associating it with love faustina isn’t wearing white she’s dressed in red and this was the typical color for Venetian Brides and the jewelry she’s wearing also relates to marriage she’s wearing a necklace and this necklace of pearls is a symbol of the woman submission to her husband and on the necklace we see that there’s a cameo and the Cameo has an image of faustina the Elder faustina the Elder was the wife of Emperor Antonio’s compayers from ancient Rome and she she was the embodiment of the perfect spouse and if we step back we can also notice faustina’s stance she’s leaning her head to the side in this gesture that makes her look somewhat docile maybe a little bit Meek and she’s positioned a little bit lower than marsilio as well and these are ways to show the subordination of a woman to her husband in marriage now these creative compositions that Lotto created and really the psychological depths of the portraits that he composed make make him one of the greatest portrait painters in the Italian Renaissance and psychology is really what has kind of pulled Lotto out from the Shadows to help his work be rediscovered after being overlooked for centuries because that happens sometimes with artists that they come in and out of fashion really just like everything else and at the beginning of the 20th century there was a great art historian called Bernard barretson and he was one of the few that really helped us look again at Lorenzo at Lorenzo Lotto really because of the psychological complexity that he’s able to capture in his paintings lotta was able to combine symbols and gestures and classical references all together to make these kind of Moody narratives that make us wonder about the interior lives of the subjects that he painted and this is why barenson said that he was perhaps the first modern painter because he was really painting the interior lives of his subjects and not just the outward appearances now it’s certainly not a coincidence that Berenson was writing this at the same time that Freud was presenting his new works on psychoanalysis and psychology was a Hot Topic at the time but his readings really helped the art world look at lotto’s work again and and revalue it and so with this in mind we have to rethink about the meaning of the work we’ve already talked about an iconographic reading of this work with all of the marital symbols but now we have to think about the psychology of the subjects that are painted and also the person who commissioned the painting which is marcelia’s father and so now we’re going to come back to Cupid’s smile again and if we look at that smile we kind of wonder what it means it’s a mysterious smile he almost looks a little bit mischievous um in the maybe more than us we might even call it a grin or or a or a smirk and he’s looking right down at marsilio Berenson pointed out how this kind of a smile this kind of an attitude is really uncommon in a ceremony that is so solemn is marriage and he thought that this gave a really ironic tone to the painting so if marsilio’s father commissioned the painting for his son’s wedding it seems like this might be kind of a warning to his son about the hardships about the difficulties of marriage that awaited him we know that marcilio married at a very young age just at 21 which was pretty young and Bergamot to get married so this also might be aside from a painting that talks about social status about the good wishes for a successful marriage also be an ironic personal message from father to son so with that we’ll end our video for today I hope that you’ve enjoyed learning a little bit more about Lorenzo lotto and Venetian portrait and we’ll see you again next Wednesday for more conversations in English
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