Pala di Asolo

In 1506 the little hill town of Asolo had a remarkable resident. Caterina Cornaro had been Queen of Cyprus until Venice eased her off the throne and handed her Asolo instead, where she kept a small court full of poets and painters. Lotto was in his mid-twenties and still signing himself the younger when he made this altarpiece for a local confraternity that ran a hospital for the poor. It shows the Virgin taken up to heaven not as a young girl but as an old woman, lifted in a ring of light. Scholars have long suspected that her face was modelled on Caterina herself, the aging queen who was living just down the road.