The Venetian painter Lotto produced highly accomplished portraits, altarpieces and devotional images for patrons in the city and on the mainland. He probably trained in Giovanni Bellini's workshop. His early work reflects the influence of both Bellini and the German artist Dürer, especially in his figures' distinctive facial features and expressive gestures. In addition to successful periods in Treviso and Bergamo, he spent some time in Rome and the Papal Marches. He returned to Venice for a while before eventually settling near Loreto in the Marches as a lay brother in a Dominican monastery.
A period in European culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries in which the visual arts flourished with advances in the treatment of anatomy and the use of perspective. It is particularly associated with Italy, where it began, though the term applies elsewhere. It is noted for a revival of interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome.
