A Lady with a Drawing of Lucretia 1531

Lorenzo Lotto painted "A Lady with a Drawing of Lucretia" in oil on canvas in Northern Italy, sometime around 1530. The image presents us with an elegantly dressed woman holding a drawing of the Roman heroine Lucretia, who killed herself to atone for being raped. Lotto is playing with visual codes of virtue and vice. The historical Lucretia became a symbol of female morality. We can see that the artist has inscribed the words ‘Nec ulla impudica Lucretiae exemplo vivet’ on the paper: ‘No unchaste woman shall live by the example of Lucretia’. Lotto painted this in a time of changing attitudes to women and marriage, and the painting suggests a very self-conscious engagement with contemporary debates around female virtue. To get a sense of how innovative this painting was at the time, we can consult archival sources and inventories. In these records we can understand how Italians of the period understood how the public role of art could shape the politics of imagery.