The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine with the patron Niccolo Bonghi 1523

Lorenzo Lotto made this oil painting of "The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine" sometime in the early 16th century. You can immediately sense the materiality of the oil paint itself, manipulated by Lotto to create depth and texture. Look closely, and you will see how the paint is layered to build up the forms, from the folds of Mary's vibrant red dress to the donor's dark velvet doublet. This painstaking process, typical of Renaissance painting, involved grinding pigments by hand and mixing them with oil to achieve the desired colors and consistency. But it is not just the sheer labor of painting; it’s also about the cultural context embedded in the materials themselves. Pigments like the expensive ultramarine blue, derived from lapis lazuli, were themselves a display of wealth. Lotto emphasizes the luxury textiles and fashionable clothing, signifying wealth and status. Recognizing the social and economic dimensions embedded within the materials and techniques of painting allows us to appreciate more fully the world that Lotto was representing.