Visitation

The Visitation—Mary"s visit to her cousin Elizabeth after the Annunciation—appears in this 1492 fresco in the Vatican Museums, part of Pinturicchio"s extensive decorative work in the papal apartments. The meeting of the two pregnant women—Mary carrying Jesus, Elizabeth carrying John the Baptist—was one of the most emotionally resonant scenes in the Marian narrative, and Italian painters typically rendered it as an embrace of joyful recognition. Pinturicchio — Bernardino di Betto — was the master of decorative fresco in late fifteenth-century Rome, executing major commissions for Pope Innocent VIII in the Belvedere, Pope Alexander VI in the Borgia Apartments, and Pope Pius III in the Piccolomini Library in Siena.

The meeting of Mary and Elizabeth is staged in a landscape or architectural setting that provides spatial context for the intimate encounter. Pinturicchio"s fresco technique shows the confident execution required for work in the papal apartments, with broad areas of color laid down in wet plaster. The two women"s embrace creates the compositional center, their contrasting ages and physical conditions conveying the narrative. The palette maintains the brilliant color of the Borgia Apartments decorative program.