Amnon violante Tamar

Amnon Assaults Tamar by Lotto depicts one of the most disturbing episodes in the Old Testament, the rape of King David’s daughter by her half-brother. Lotto’s willingness to include this shocking subject in a church decorative program reflects the comprehensive approach to biblical narrative that characterized the Bergamo intarsia cycle. His itinerant career—Venice, Bergamo, Recanati, Rome, and finally the Santa Casa at Loreto where he became an oblate—reflected an inability to establish himself in any single tradition, producing instead the most psychologically restless portraiture of the High Renaissance.

The violent scene is rendered with restrained but unmistakable horror. Lotto’s composition conveys the power dynamic between the figures through gesture and expression.