Transfiguration

On the second of September 1513 the Cassotti brothers, Bergamo merchants who had made their money in wool and silk, put their names to a contract for the altar of their family chapel in Santa Maria delle Grazie. Andrea Previtali had come home from Venice only a year or two before, and this was among the first things his own city asked of him. A Transfiguration normally comes with a crowd, Moses and Elijah flanking Christ and three apostles knocked flat by the light. Previtali left the prophets out altogether and pushed the apostles far back into the landscape, so Christ stands almost alone in his white robe, with gold rays coming down through the cloud and the countryside running away behind him to the sea. He signed and dated the panel on the book at the lower right. In 1811 it was taken to Milan.