The Virgin of Carmel

This is early Moretto, painted around 1522 when the Brescian painter was in his early twenties and still finding his manner. It was almost certainly made for the Carmelite confraternity's altar in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Brescia, showing the Virgin handing down the brown scapular that members of the order wore. How it left Brescia is oddly specific. It came to the Accademia in Venice in an exchange, traded for two paintings sent north to the temple that the sculptor Antonio Canova built in his home town of Possagno. Moretto would spend his whole life working in and around Brescia, rarely straying far from the city.