Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

The scene is set on a single day, the fortieth after Christ's birth, when Jewish law brought a firstborn son to the temple and required the mother's ritual purification. Luke's Gospel adds the figure who makes the moment: old Simeon, promised he would not die until he had seen the Messiah, takes the infant in his arms. Bissolo paints it the Venetian way of his day, as a close half-length group pressed near the picture surface, a devotional format meant to put the worshipper an arm's length from the holy figures rather than at the back of a grand temple. The same Gospel notes that Mary and Joseph brought two doves for the offering, the substitute the law allowed to a family too poor to afford a lamb.