Lucina Brembati is the very image of the jolie laide. Thin brows, crooked nose, sideways smile. Not a beauty, but what fun she is with her furs and jewels. That dreary advice about looking in the mirror and taking off one accessory before you leave the palazzo? Lucina puts another six on.
Borrowed from Bergamo, Lucina is a highlight of the superb exhibition Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits at the National Gallery in London. Sitting for Lotto in around 1520, Lucina wears five rings, two necklaces, a pearl crown, an enormous bouffant capigliara headdress, and a weasel-skin stole with ears, eyes and teeth intact. I hope she won’t mind my calling her Lucina. She positively invites intimacy, allowing Lotto to include her name in a background rebus: a moon with the letters “CI” in its crescent. A cryptic clue: “ci” in “luna” makes “Lucina”.
