page_title: Suardi Chapel
section_title: Iconography
hierarchical_section_title: Suardi Chapel / Iconography
caption_attribution_description: Lotto, affreschi di trescore
context_page_description: The Suardi Chapel is an oratory or private chapel inside the villa in Trescore Balneario, Province of Bergamo owned by the Suardi counts. It is dedicated to Saint Barbara and Saint Brigid and was completely rebuilt by the cousins Giovan Battista and Maffeo Suardi. It is fully covered in 1524 frescoes commissioned by them from by Lorenzo Lotto of Christ the Vine and Lives of the Saints. In the 19th century count Gianforte Suardi built a corridor connecting the chapel to the villa and modified the chapel entrance - those entering had previously immediately found themselves in front of the north wall with its depiction of Christ the Vine.
  Located on the road across the Val Cavallina which links Bergamo to Lago d'Iseo, the chapel had existed since the 15th century. Around 1523 count Giovan Battista Suardi commissioned Lotto to decorate the oratory and so the artist immediately moved to the area. By this show of piety the count hoped to avert a flood and to counter the seeds of Lutheranism brought to northern Italy by the Landsknechts. The frescoes were complete by summer 1524.
context_section_description: Simple and rustic in its architecture, the chapel's plan is essentially rectangular with a pitched wooden roof supported by exposed beams, along with a small semicircular apse with some modest existing frescoes from before Lotto's time. Lotto's frescoes are spread over three walls above a large plinth. Together they form an complex iconographic programme on redemption and faith as incarnated in the lives of saints Barbara (north side), Brigid (south side), Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria (back wall), along with Christ's victory over evil as predicted by the prophets and sibyls and guaranteed and confirmed in the lives of the saints. Several figures show peasants and other working class figures, often studied from life and previously unrepresented in Italian painting.
  Lotto also frescoed the ceiling between (and using) the beams, creating a fake pergola against a bright blue background, with playing putti and cartouches with biblical and liturgical passages about vines and wine as used in the mass. The brushwork is quick but efficient and the work's taste for popular narration (typical of Lotto) remains wedded to the north Italian tradition.
caption: Detail of the ceiling
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