"Presentation of Jesus in Temple"

Lorenzetti was an Italian artist who ranks in importance with the greatest of the Italian Sienese painters. Only six documented works of Ambrogio, apparently covering a period of merely 13 years, have survived, one of which is the signed and dated panels of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. His early works indicate that he early received his main inspiration from the art of Duccio, his brother Pietro, and Giotto. Already his representations reveal a realistic individualism and an intense preoccupation with significant composition and form. Ambrogio is seen as an acute observer, an empirical explorer of linear and aerial perspective, a student of Classical works of art, and a political and moral philosopher. His desire to depict spatial depth convincingly led him to an increasingly accurate rendering of space in his paintings and almost to one-point perspective in his last work, the Annunciation. With his profound interest in perspective and in Classical antiquity, Ambrogio anticipated the Renaissance.                

In this painting we see Mary in red and blue (red – suffering, and blue – the mystery of Divine life), Joseph, dressed in rose – the color of joy); the rabbi behind the altar; possibly her close kinswoman, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (in orange and red – also expressed as the color of the Holy Spirit: fire, love, and communion); the holy man Simeon (in green, the color of revival and hope) and the prophetess and widow Anna (in purple, the color of dignitaries – she was a “dignitary” because she spent many hours in the Temple, praising God and fasting ).  Refer to Luke’s Gospel (2: 22 – 40).