Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

Painted around 1700, this is Venetian religious painting at a careful, orderly moment, before the ceilings filled with the bright weightless crowds of the Rococo. Gregorio Lazzarini was known for exactly this measured manner, clear drawing and balanced groups, and he tells the Temple scene without fuss, the old man Simeon taking the infant into his arms as Mary and Joseph bring him to be presented, the moment a devout Jew recognises the child he had been promised he would live to see. About a decade after this was made, a boy of 14 named Giambattista Tiepolo entered Lazzarini's workshop to learn the trade, and would go on to paint in a manner nothing like this one. Here the lesson is still in the drawing, every figure set firmly in its place.