Specchio di Virtu: il consorzio della Vergine e gli affreschi di Lorenzo Lotto in San Michele al Pozzo Bianco. (Reviews).

Costanza Barbieri, Specchio di Virtu: il consorzio della Vergine e gli affreschi di Lorenzo Lotto in San Michele al Pozzo Bianco

Bergamo: Lubrina Editore, 2000. 179 pp. Euro 12.91. ISBN: 88-7766-221-2.

In 1525, before leaving Bergamo for Venice, Lotto signed and dated a series of frescos situated in a small chapel belonging to a religious confraternity that had its seat in a building adjacent to the church of San Michele al Pozzo Bianco. The chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, shows (on the wall above the entrance and three lunettes) episodes from the life of Mary: Nativity, Presentation at the Temple, Annunciation, Visitation, and Betrothal. On the "pennacchi" are painted the symbols of the four Evangelists, and from the small dome God the Father blesses and acknowledges the events that take place below him.

These works, their iconography and possible religious meaning, together with their commission and a detailed section on the charitable, social, and religious role played by the confraternity, are the subject of Barbieri's monograph. Since all pertinent documentation has been lost, what Barbieri does, and does brilliantly, is to shape peripheral data and related archival information into a likely sequence of events. Lotto lived for a while in the parish to which San Michele al Pozzo Bianco belonged, in the house of Nicolo Bonghi, an important member of the community, and where Battista Suardo (like Bonghi one of Lotto's patrons) and Girolamo Passi also lived. The author identifies Girolamo Passi as the pivotal agent who made the frescos possible. This first section of the book is a lively, interesting micro-history of Bergamo and of the historical period as seen from the vantage point of a single parish, with its variegated social, economic, and religious components made alive and real.

The intelligent logic that, behind the mass of archival data, guides Barbieri's conclusions and makes her suggestions about patronage convincing, is not, unfortunately, carried over into the second part of her work. Although her knowledge of published sources and her pyrotechnics of writing are impressive, her results -- like the Rube Goldberg contraptions that are contrived for their own sake -- are clever and interesting, but not entirely convincing.

According to Barbieri the meaning of the entire cycle rotates around the fairly new theological tenet regarding Mary's Immaculate Conception. If, she posits, Mary is not bathed in her Nativity scene, this is because she is already without sin and does not need a ritual bath. That for centuries of iconography the birth of Christ had included the bathing of the newborn, indicating that the bath signifies something beyond cleansing from sin, is not considered. The author holds to her iconographic scheme even when it lacks the most obvious evidence, namely the visual material. To build an elaborate theory upon the similarity of the obelisk today in St. Peter's square (Rome) with the one seen behind the Virgin in Lotto's Presentation at the Temple, and to dismiss offhand what other scholars had written about the symbolism of such structures, is misleading. Furthermore, the two obelisks, the real and the painted one, are not even faintly similar visually. As for the "surprising affinities" of Lotto's God the Father with Raphael's Vision of Ezechiel (Pitti), what strikes the unbiased eye in particular are their fundamental differences. Again, are the two women seen next to Mary in the Visitation scene really pregnant? Most viewers would conclude not. This crescendo of shaky conclusions leads to her discussion of the four symbols of the Evangelists and of the objects that, placed below each one, seem to form part of an impresa. Here Barbieri's seeming unawareness of the fundamental difference between ox and bull, and of the symbolic variances that this difference can produce, leaves the reader truly perplexed.

This monograph is the final product of the author's university thesis and some published articles. Notwithstanding its defects, it is quite readable and cleverly composed. Crammed with a wealth of information, extensive quotations and a lavish use of secondary sources, its fault is that too often the mass of data invoked to prop up a theory fails to convince, either because the visual evidence is simply not there, or because the theory simply stretches the limits of iconographic credibility and common sense. The illustrations are of poor quality and it is a pity that the only color plates illustrate minor details and not the main scenes of the cycle. Indeed, like the illustrations, this monograph only partially does justice to a minor but not negligible work by Lorenzo Lotto.