Распятие

Lotto was a Venetian, but by 1531 Venice had largely stopped hiring him. Younger, flashier painters were winning the big commissions, so he took work where he could find it, out in the hill towns of the Marche. This towering Crucifixion went to a small church in Monte San Giusto, ordered by the local bishop, who paid him 100 gold florins and a supply of olive oil. Lotto crowded the ground beneath the crosses with a jostling, disorganised mass of soldiers, horses and raised spears, so the eye has to climb up through the chaos to reach Christ. The calm figure standing at the foot of the cross, turned to face us, is often taken to be Lotto himself. No one even noticed his signature on the picture until 1831.