The Transfiguration of Christ 1511

Lorenzo Lotto painted 'The Transfiguration of Christ', with no confirmed creation date. Its composition is divided into two distinct registers and the colour palette is defined by luminous pastels. This immediately creates a sense of the divine above and the earthly below. The lower level shows the apostles in a tangle of forms. The classical pyramid composition has been overturned. It is replaced with an arrangement of gestures and gazes that disorients the viewer. The symbolic order is disrupted and the human and divine spheres are brought into tension. Look at how Lotto has rendered Christ, not as an ethereal being, but with a body that is both present and radiant. The artist challenges fixed meanings. The painting becomes a site where the celestial meets the terrestrial, prompting us to question the boundaries that define our understanding of the sacred and the mundane. It is a constant invitation to interpret and reinterpret.