Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio

This was the last thing Lorenzo Lotto painted. Late in life he had run out of money and steady patrons, and in 1554, his eyesight failing, he moved into the Holy House sanctuary at Loreto as a lay brother, taking board in exchange for work. He made several large canvases for the church there, and this Presentation of Christ in the Temple was still unfinished when he died around 1556. You can read it in the loose, thinly worked passages and the tired, sketchlike faces, an old man's hand no longer chasing polish. Lotto had spent decades slightly outside the Venetian mainstream, never as celebrated as Titian across the lagoon. He ended quietly in a pilgrimage town, and this canvas, one of a planned series on Christ's childhood, stayed in the church at Loreto where he left it.