St Antoninus Giving Alms

St Antoninus Giving Alms or The Alms of St Antoninus is a c.1540-1542 oil on canvas painting by Lorenzo Lotto. It shows Antoninus of Florence and is now in the basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice.

Lotto kept a detailed account book, which on 8 December 1540 mentions the arrival in his studio of a canvas already nailed to a frame. He removed and replaced that frame and support. This has been argued to show that the commission for the Antoninus was originally signed around 1525 and was the reason for Lotto's move from Bergamo to Venice, where he stayed in the Dominican monastery.

His work on the painting may have been interrupted in July 1526, when the artist left the monastery in disgust at certain slanders circulating about him. He returned to the monastery and renewed the commission - his will of 1546 shows him wishing to be buried in its cemetery and in return renouncing part of the fee for the painting. The work went wholly unmentioned in Venice at the time of its production due to the intelligentsia's hostility to Lotto and preference for Titian and his followers.

Bibliography

Giulio Carlo Argan, Storia dell'arte italiana 3, Firenze, Sansoni, 2000, p. 153.
Carlo Pirovano, Lotto, Electa, Milano 2002. ISBN 88-435-7550-3
Roberta D'Adda, Lotto, Skira, Milano 2004.

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