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By the late 1530s Lorenzo Lotto was in trouble. Once sought after across northern Italy, he was aging, short of money, and moving from town to town for work. This altarpiece was ordered in 1538 for a chapel in the Dominican church of San Paolo in Treviso, and he was still finishing it years later. He built the scene as a tight pyramid of figures against near-total darkness, so nothing pulls your eye away from Mary cradling her dead son. That black background was a Northern habit more than an Italian one, meant to press all the grief into the faces. When Napoleon's officials closed the church, the painting was sold in 1811 for 12 ducats, and it has hung in Milan ever since.