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

St Lucy at the Tomb of St Agatha

1532
Oil on wood, 32 x 69 cm
Pinacoteca Civica, Iesi

The predella of the St Lucy Altarpiece was constituted by three panels, from left to right: St Lucy at the Tomb of St Agatha; St Lucy before Paschasius and St Lucy Harnessed to Oxen; Teams of Oxen. The altarpiece was commissioned from Lotto by the Confraternity of St Lucy in Iesi in 1523.

The predella scenes reveal Lotto's talent as a painter of lively narrative scenes.

The story of St Lucy begins in the left predella panel, in which the future saint, daughter of a noble family in Syracuse, visits the shrine of St Agatha with her mother Euthicia, who for four years has been suffering from an incurable issue of blood. The two women kneel near an altar during the celebration of mass, during which the priest reads the passage from the gospel describing the miraculous cure by Jesus of the woman suffering from the same affliction as Euthicia. Euthicia prays at the shrine for a similar cure while Lucy, asleep, experiences a vision of St Agatha surrounded by angels. When she awakens, Lucy cures her mother, and begs to be released from her promise to marry, so that she can give away her dowry to the poor. The story in this panel closes with the women distributing alms to beggars in rag.

The scene in the first predella panel is set in a Renaissance church, the architectural spaces of which provide distinct areas for the successive events. St Lucy is represented four times, she is identifiable by her yellow robe, red cloak, and laurel crown.