Abigail Meloy

Image and Word Reconsidered: Lorenzo Lotto’s Trescore Frescoes, Trinity, and Madonna of the Rosary

Although critically disavowed by art critics during his lifetime, Venetian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto has attracted a revival of interest over the past century. Modern scholarship on Lotto has admired his “inventive” iconography in his religious works, including his Trescore frescoes and his altarpieces Trinity and Madonna of the Rosary. Attempts at interpreting Lotto’s artworks illuminate limitations within a common maneuver for understanding Renaissance art, an approach that has its roots in Erwin Panofsky’s studies of iconology. While many scholars have emphasized deviations from and literal illustrations of scripture in the Trescore frescoes, Trinity, and Madonna of the Rosary, this project explores select contenders of iconology as a starting point for thinking about the “meaning-making” of these works. By affirming the fundamental differences between images and words, I examine overlooked elements and visual strategies employed by Lotto as they relate to different ways of thinking about the dynamics of image and word as well as to the function of devotional art upon the beholder.