Auction cataloguers have what they call "bins" into which they throw unattributable paintings. Anything remotely sixteenth century where the figures have their heads inclined at impossible angles is thrown into the Lotto bin and described as "follower of Lorenzo Lotto". The cataloguers recognize Lotto's odd way of painting figures for what it is, art historians like Robert Hughes call it  "An Enchanting Strangeness." The trouble with followers of great painters is that they tend to emulate the idiosyncrasies of their masters to a greater degree, so the Old Master catalogues of Sotheby's and Christie's are blighted by numerous Lotto style paintings where the bent neck syndrome becomes laughable.

Lotto is held to be one of the greatest artists working in Venice during the sixteenth century overshadowed only by Titian.  His penchant for painting immobile blank-eyed models with stiff necks is passed off by art historians as an acceptable "mannerism" that represents to the artist a form of ideal beauty. On women, he loved that expanse of broad white shoulder and neck and saw the exaggerated bent head as a trademark of grace.  This is acceptable when you view your first Lotto painting with models so inflicted but after you have seen dozens of tilted heads in dozens of pictures it becomes ANNOYING.
 

Sumptuous colours, exquisite beauty... but the most awkward positions imaginable. How strained, how artificial the middle figures appear next to the admirable male portrait of Lotto's smiling donor.  (DETAIL) Lorenzo Lotto,  Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, Oil on canvas, 81 x 115cm, signed "Laurentius Lotus", dated 1523 (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo)

The stiff neck treatment was not reserved for supernatural figures such as the Virgin and Saint Catherine (above), but was imposed upon mere mortals as well. Dull-eyed, wooden and expressionless Signor and Signora Marsilio are joined in holy matrimony. The stiffness is not only conveyed by the bent neck but by the broad frontal mass of the upper body. (DETAIL) Lorenzo Lotto, Messer Marsilio and His Wife, oil on panel, 71 x 84 cm, signed L.Lotus and dated pictor 1523, (Madrid, Museo del Prado).

This is a superb portrait, but why does the sitter look like he is about to fall out of the picture? Did Lotto have a crooked easel? Did his studio floors slope drastically? Lorenzo Lotto, Man with a Golden Paw, c. 1527 Oil on canvas, 96 x 70 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Please - no outraged emails from renaissance art scholars - have a sense of humour!

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