LOTTO, Lorenzo
(b. ca. 1480, Venezia, d. 1556, Loreto)

Legend of St Brigid (detail)

1523-24
Fresco
Oratorio Suardi, Trescore

The various narrative scenes on the long entrance wall (the south wall), depicted on a large scale in the foreground and a small scale in the landscape beyond, represent episodes from the life of St Brigid, an Irish nun venerated for her charitable activity on behalf of the poor and sick and, most appropriate in the context of the rural community of Trescore, as a protector of crops and farm animals against natural disasters. Thus, in the central section next to and above the doorway, the saint in her distinctive yellow habit is presented four times: in the left foreground she gives food (raw meat, which miraculously has failed to mark her habit) and drink (water miraculously transformed into beer) to two peasant women; to the right, she heals a blind man; in the left background she saves a flock of sheep from a wild boar; and in the right background she halts the advance of a devastating storm.