In Portrait of a Young Man with a Book (1524), for instance, painted three years before Lotto’s likeness of Odoni (and also on display in the exhibition), the gilt-edged tome that the lad grips tightly in his talons is more than an incidental prop. According to the sumptuous catalogue that accompanies the show, it is believed by scholars that the seemingly haunted young man is holding a copy of Petrarch’s Il Canzoniere, a volume of verse that throbs with the ache of unrequited passion. We, the observers of Lotto’s painting, are implicated in its edgy drama by having interrupted the youth who, moments before, was feverishly flicking in vain through the pages of Petrarch’s poems (the book’s ribbons are as dishevelled as his nerves) in search of consolation for his heartache. The book isn’t there to suggest the sitter’s erudition. It’s a sounding board of his lovesick soul.

Keeping count

Or take another example also on show, a work painted sometime between the Portrait of a Young Man with a Book and the Portrait of Andrea Odoni: Lotto’s penetrating Portrait of a Dominican Friar (1526), for which Marcantonio Luciani, the treasurer of the convent of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, is believed to have sat for Lotto. What is it that Luciani, whose polished pate glistens like an inscrutable crystal ball, is scribbling in his ledger? To judge from the piercing quality of his eyes, which don’t so much follow yours around the room as interrogate your subconscious for secrets you thought you’d take to the grave, he’s the one keeping track of our worthiness to proceed into the hereafter.