The Bevilacqua Lazise Altarpiece

The altarpiece represents the Virgin and Child with saints Louis of Toulouse and John the Baptist and the donors Giovanni Bevilacqua Lazise and Lucrezia Malaspina. It hung over the altar in the chapel which Lucrezia Malaspina commissioned in 1548 in memory of her husband. Damaged in the upper part, in the face of the Child and in part of the face of the Virgin, the painting still preserves stunning pictorial passages, especially in the figure of Saint Louis of Toulouse, whose twisted pose recalls figures of Michelangelo in the Sistine ceiling. Even with the naked eye one can clearly discern the pentimento, or correction, made to the capriciously manneristic figure of the Baptist, who in the first version was shown pointing to the Virgin.