Le Christ prenant congé de sa mère

This is a goodbye the Gospels never actually describe. By long tradition, before walking toward Jerusalem and his death, Christ paused to take leave of his mother, and painters especially loved the human ache of that parting. Lotto painted it in 1521 in Bergamo, the busy Lombard city where he spent his most productive years. He set the two figures in a comfortable domestic room, Mary collapsing back into the arms of the other women while Christ kneels almost tenderly before her. Off to the side kneels a real woman in fine contemporary dress. She is Elisabetta Rota, the local noblewoman who paid for the picture, placed inside the sacred scene as if she had walked into the room to watch it happen.