Christ Taking Leave of his Mother

One of the masterpieces of Lorenzo Lotto, anticipating the successive Lombardian painting of the 16th century. The painting was probably commissioned by the Tassi family in Bergamo and the kneeling woman at the right was identified as Elisabetta Rota, wife of Domenico Tassi.

Lotto never accepted the material and secular values of painting in his native city of Venice and the Christ Taking Leave of his Mother shows how he used ambiguities of space and scale to heighten the religious and visionary effects of his paintings. At the same time he was capable of great intensity of observation, and his works often include passages of detail.