Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

1529 was the year the long fight over Lombardy was finally settled. France gave up its Italian claims that August at Cambrai, and Charles V sailed to Genoa to be crowned emperor at Bologna the following winter. Romanino spent that year at Salò, on Lake Garda, and this large panel was most likely painted for somebody in that lakeside district.

He signed it and dated it, which is rare enough in his work to make it a fixed point in his career, and it is one of the best preserved things he left. Mary and Joseph stand at the left, a servant kneels holding the two doves that the offering required, and the priest lifts the Child over the altar. The heads crowded around them are real portraits, faces from the town rather than types, so the people who paid for the painting are very likely standing inside it. Where it hung for its first three centuries is unknown. The first mention of it anywhere is in a guidebook to Brescia printed in 1826.