THE cities and towns of the Marche have enjoyed a long yet quiet prosperity. A succession of snaking valleys descend gently towards the Adriatic, the Venetian dominance over which has left an extraordinary legacy in the Bellinis at Pesaro and Rimini, and the Titians at Ancona and Urbino. No Venetian recognized the potential of Marchigian patronage more clearly than Lotto. And its legacy endures. One can follow his career from the Recanati polyptych of 1508, by way of the Jesi Entombment of 1512, the incomparable Saint Lucy altarpiece of 1532 also at Jesi and the visionary Madonna of the Rosary of 1539 – with its scattered rose petals – at Cingoli, to the later canvasses at Loreto. The Recanati Annunciation, with its cat, is the most familiar of the Marchigian Lottos, but the most prodigious must be the Crucifixion of 1531 at Monte San Giusto.
The town stands high above the valley of the Chienti. Like others in the area it is built largely of brick. At its centre is the Palazzo Bonafede built for Niccolò Bonafede, Bishop of Chiusi, between 1504 and 1524. The nearby church of Santa Maria in Telusiano was remodelled by the bishop as his mausoleum, and he was buried there in 1534. The modest brick façade offers no hint of the interior. This is dominated by the altarpiece, with Lotto’s great arched Crucifixion in the original gilded frame. Modern lighting means that it is easy to savour the dazzling use of colour that has so important a part in the visual drama. In the foreground is the swooning Virgin, supported by Saint John – who seems almost to project from the painted space – and the attendant Maries. Saint John looks to the left, towards the kneeling bishop. Bonafede’s arms are crossed in prayer, his massive head almost disturbingly larger than that of the angel who acts as intermediary. The eye is drawn upwards. The crosses stand out against the evening sky, a dark cloud silhouetting Christ with his billowing loin-cloth, and the thieves, good and bad, their arms tied behind the crossbars. Below is a noisy pell-mell of soldiers, each carefully characterized. Lotto is so individual that one is not at first aware of the range of pictorial experience on which he draws: the clarity of the Venice of Bellini, the classical rhetoric of the mature Raphael, prints by Dürer and other northern prototypes. His digestive power was matched, however, by his visual independence of mind, by an unfailing narrative conviction, and by an almost miraculous sense for colour. The Crucifixion is at once deeply moving and breathtakingly beautiful.
Monte San Giusto, Santa Maria in Telusiano: Lorenzo Lotto, Crucifixion, 1531, in the original frame.
