The rich man and Lazarus

The parable is grim, yet Bonifazio stages it as a party. In the Gospel a rich man feasts every day while a beggar named Lazarus starves at his gate. Here the rich man's table has become a fashionable Venetian gathering on a country estate, the sort of mainland villa that patrician families were building in the 1540s. Painted around 1540 for the Giustiniani, one of Venice's leading families, it puts an old warning into contemporary silk. Well-dressed guests sit under a portico, two of them making music while a young page holds the songbook. Off at the edge, easy to overlook, the beggar holds out his hand while a dog licks the sores on his legs.