Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/36

Rh promoting lotteries in Alaska was prohibited by Congress, and in 1900 it forbade any lottery or sale of lottery tickets in Hawaii. In Porto Rico lotteries, raffles and gift-enterprises are forbidden (Penal Code, 1902, § 291).

.—''Critique hist. pol. mor. econ. et comm. sur les'' ''loteries anc. et mod. spirituelles et temporelles des états et des églises'' (3 vols., Amsterdam, 1697), by the Bolognese historian Gregorio Leti; J. Dessaulx, De la passion du jeu depuis les anciens temps jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1779); Endemann, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Lottrie und zur heutigen Lotterie (Bonn, 1882); Larson, Lottrie und Volkswirtschaft (Berlin, 1894); J. Ashton, History of English Lotteries (1893); Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1892); Journal of the American Social Science Association, xxxvi. 17.

LOTTI, ANTONIO (1667?–1740), Italian musical composer, was the son of Matteo Lotti, Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover. He was born, however, at Venice and as a pupil of Legrenzi. He entered the Doge’s chapel as a boy, and in 1689 was engaged as an alto singer, succeeding later to the posts of deputy organist (1690), second organist (1692), first organist (1704), and, finally, in 1736 Maestro di Cappella at St Mark’s church. He was also a composer of operas, and having attracted the interest of the crown prince of Saxony during his visit to Venice in 1712, he was invited to Dresden, where he went in 1717. After producing three operas there he was obliged to return to his duties at Venice in 1719. He died on the 5th of January 1740. Like many other Venetian composers he wrote operas for Vienna, and enjoyed a considerable reputation outside Italy. A volume of madrigals published in 1705 contains the famous In una siepe ombrosa, passed off by Bononcini as his own in London. Another is quoted by Martini in his Saggio di Contrappunto. Among his pupils were Alberti, Bassani, Galuppi, Gasparini and Marcello. Burney justly praises his church music, which is severe in style, but none the less modern in its grace and pathos. A fine setting of the Dies Irae is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and some of his masses have been printed in the collections of Proske and Lück.

LOTTO, LORENZO (c. 1480–1556), Italian painter, is variously stated to have been born at Bergamo, Venice and Treviso, between 1475 and 1480, but a document published by Dr Bampo proves that he was born in Venice, and it is to be gathered from his will that 1480 was probably the year of his birth. Overshadowed by the genius of his three great contemporaries, Titian, Giorgione and Palma, he had been comparatively neglected by art historians until Mr Bernhard Berenson devoted to him an “essay in constructive art criticism,” which not only restores to him his rightful position among the great masters of the Renaissance, but also throws clear light upon the vexed question of his artistic descent. Earlier authorities have made Lotto a pupil of Giovanni Bellini (Morelli), of Previtali (Crowe and Cavalcaselle), of Leonardo da Vinci (Lomazzo), whilst others discovered in his work the influences of Cima, Carpaccio, Dürer, Palma and Francia. Mr Berenson has, however, proved that he was the pupil of Alvise Vivarini, whose religious severity and asceticism remained paramount in his work, even late in his life, when he was attracted by the rich glow of Giorgione’s and Titian’s colour. What distinguishes Lotto from his more famous contemporaries is his psychological insight into character and his personal vision—his unconventionality, which is sufficient to account for the comparative neglect suffered by him when his art is placed beside the more typical art of Titian and Giorgione, the supreme expression of the character of the period.

That Lotto, who was one of the most productive painters of his time, could work for thirty years without succumbing to the mighty influence of Titian’s sumptuous colour, is explained by the fact that during these years he was away from Venice, as is abundantly proved by documents and by the evidence of signed and dated works. The first of these documents, dated 1503, proves him to have lived at Treviso at this period. His earliest authentic pictures, Sir Martin Conway’s “Danaë” (about 1498) and the “St Jerome” of the Louvre (a similar subject is at the Madrid Gallery ascribed to Titian), as indeed all the works executed before 1509, have unmistakable Vivarinesque traits in the treatment of the drapery and landscape, and cool grey tonality. To this group belong the Madonnas at Bridgewater House, Villa Borghese, Naples, and Sta Cristina near Treviso, the Recanati altarpiece, the “Assumption of the Virgin” at Asolo, and the portrait of a young man at Hampton Court. We find him at Rome between 1508 and 1512, at the time Raphael was painting in the Stanza della Signatura. A document in the Corsini library mentions that Lotto received 100 ducats as an advance payment for fresco-work in the upper floor of the Vatican, but there is no evidence that this work was ever executed. In the next dated works, the “Entombment” at Jesi (1512), and the “Transfiguration,” “St James,” and “St Vincent” at Recanati, Lotto has abandoned the dryness and cool colour of his earlier style, and adopted a fluid method and a blonde, joyful colouring. In 1513 we find him at Bergamo, where he had entered into a contract to paint for 500 gold ducats an altarpiece for S. Stefano. The picture was only completed in 1516, and is now at S. Bartolommeo. From the next years, spent mostly at Bergamo, with intervals in Venice and Jesi in the Marches, date the Dresden “Madonna,” “Christ taking leave of his Mother” at the Berlin Gallery, the “Bride and Bridegroom” at Madrid, the National Gallery “Family Group” and portrait of the Protonothary Giuliano, several portraits in Berlin, Milan and Vienna, numerous altarpieces in and near Bergamo, the strangely misnamed “Triumph of Chastity” at the Rospigliosi Palace in Rome, and the portrait of Andrea Odoni at Hampton Court. In 1526 or 1527 Lotto returned to Venice, where Titian ruled supreme in the world of art; and it was only natural that the example of the great master should have fired him to emulation, though his experiments in this direction were confined to an attempt at rivalling the master’s rich and ruddy colour-schemes. Even in the Carmine altarpiece, the “St Nicholas of Bari,” which is his nearest approach to Titian, he retained his individualized, as opposed to Titian’s generalized, expression of emotion. But it was only a passing phase, and he soon returned to the cooler schemes of his earlier work. Among his chief pictures executed in Venice between 1529 and 1540 are the “Christ and the Adulteress,” now at the Louvre, the “Visitation” at the Jesi Library, the “Crucifixion” at Monte S. Giusto, the Madonna at the Uffizi, the “Madonna and Saints” at Cingoli, and some portraits at the Berlin and Vienna museums, the Villa Borghese and Doria Palace in Rome, and at Dorchester House. He is again to be found at Treviso from 1542–1545, at Ancona in 1550, the year in which he entirely lost his voice; and in 1552 he “devoted his person and all his property to the Holy Virgin of Loreto” and took up his abode with the monks of that shrine. He died in 1556. A codex in his own handwriting, discovered in the archives of Loreto, not only includes a complete statement of his accounts from about 1539 to his death, but has a most interesting entry from which we gather that in 1540 Lotto completed the portraits of Martin Luther and his wife. These portraits could not have been painted from life; they were presumably executed from some contemporary engraving.

See Lorenzo Lotto, by Bernard Berenson (London, 1901).

LOTTO (Ital. for “lot”), a gambling game usually called Keno in America, played by any number of persons upon large boards or cards, each of which is divided into three horizontal rows of nine spaces, four spaces in each row being left blank and the other five marked with numbers up to 90. Each card is designated by a general number. The cards usually lie on the gambling-table, and a player may buy from the bank as many as he cares to use, each card being registered or pegged on an exposed table as soon as bought. Ninety small ivory markers, generally balls flattened on one side, numbered from 1 to 90, are placed in a bag and shaken out one by one, or, more usually, in a so-called keno-goose, a kind of urn with a spout through which the balls are allowed to roll by means of a spring. When a number falls out, the banker, or keno-roller, calls it out distinctly, and each player upon whose card that number occurs places a mark over it. This is repeated until one player has all the numbers in one row of his card covered, upon which he calls out “Keno !” and wins all the money staked excepting a percentage to the bank.

LOTUS, a popular name applied to several plants. The lotus fruits of the Greeks belonged to Zizyphus Lotus, a bush native