Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine and Thomas (sacra conversazione)

In the Venetian painting of the early 16th century, a new type of sacra conversazione became established alongside the older type (Cat. No. 5), in which the figures were depicted in an architectural setting. The new type was often in landscape format and set outdoors under an open sky. There are several examples of this in Lotto’s work, which was inspired in particular by Palma Vecchio, with whom Lotto was on friendly terms, according to the artists’ biographer Vasari. Palma Vecchio had abandoned the conventional hierarchic arrangement offigures and developed more intimate compositions seen from a closer distance. Lotto, who was considered the most individualist of the Venetian artists of his generation, continued these tendencies. In their gestures, glances and posture, his figures were much closer together than those of the painters before him. The backdrop of the picture is a gently illuminated landscape in the distance. Mary and the Child, Catherine, Thomas and an angel are seated in the shadow of a tree. Lotto decisively changes the time-honoured type: the picture is marked not by the tranquillity of the High Renaissance but by the sensitive expressiveness of early Mannerism. A continuous and nervous stream of movement sweeps across the picture, from the arms of the angel crowning the Madonna to the hand of the Child reaching for the book to the head of Catherine as she looks towards the devout Apostle, who with his intimate eye contact with Mary leads the viewer back to the Virgin. The cool and scarcely Venetian coloration – found throughout Lotto’s work – is rooted in the painting of Bergamo, where he spent most of his life, but also in the art of Dürer. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010