Focus on this artwork and explore the History.
The work was seen by the art biographer Giorgio Vasari in the church of Sant'Agostino in Ancona, where Lotto had fled in reply to the hostility received in Venice. It was later moved to the church of Santa Maria della Piazza and, after other locations, the current one.
The painting dates to a few years after the coup by which Ancona had been restored to the Papal States. The resistance had been brutally suppressed, many of the rebels having been beheaded by order of the papal legate. The upside-down halberd has been thus interpreted as a symbol of peace.
Giorgio Vasari Ancona Santa Maria della Piazza coup Sant'Agostino Papal States halberd