The Deposition of Christ with Apostle Saint Bartholomew and Saint Catherine of Alexandria

ca. 1675 – oil on arched canvas, cm 349 x 177

Bavarian painter Johann Carl Loth came to Venice in the early 1650s embracing the tenebrism, the new painting style that in those years was spreading on the Venetian artistic scene. This evocative altarpiece located in the church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti (commonly known as the church dell’Ospedaletto), features a marked chiaroscuro modulation reminiscent of post-Caravaggesque naturalism.

The altarpiece, painted shortly after 1675, is characterised by a masterly handing of light making Christ’s slender, lifeless, and diagonally-positioned body powerfully emerge out of the darkness. Part of the composition are Catherine of Alexandria and apostle Bartholomew, the patron saints of Bartolomeo Borghesaleo and his wife who commissioned the work.