Madonna with Child between Saints Flavian and Onuphrius, an oil painting by Lorenzo Lotto, signed and dated 1508, now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, is executed in the same year of the Recanati Polyptych, when Lotto moves to Rome (although it is not known if he had already painted it before leaving the Marche).

It is first mentioned in a 1693 document, when it is already part of the Borghese Collection.

The painting uses the Holy Conversation composition, with the Madonna and Child in the center between two saints, a scheme widely used by Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian painters of the time.

It depicts, on a dark background, a thoughtful Madonna.

The Child is rather fat, and is trying to reach St. Flavian of Ricina, painted on the left.

The latter is offering Jesus a pierced heart, a symbol of the future Passion.

The identification of Flavian, the patron of the city of Recanati in the Marche, is disputed, and some scholars identified him as Ignatius of Antioch: according to the legend, after his death his heart opened and the name of Jesus (as referred by Lotto with the monogram YHS on it) in golden letters.

On the right is Onuphrius the hermit, whose character was inspired by Dürer's Christ among the Doctors, which the German artist had painted in Venice in 1506.

Other elements recalling Dürer's works include the general asymmetry of the composition, the bright colors and the drapes, which Lotto had previous painted as screwed up paper, and are now instead softer and more colored.

The Recanati Polyptych, a painting by Lorenzo Lotto, executed in 1506-1508, is housed in the Civic Museum of Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati, Italy, is dated and signed Laurent[ius] Lotus MDVIII.

Lotto had begun to work on the piece in 1506 as a devotional for the church of San Domenico in Recanati.

The polyptych includes a larger altarpiece in the center, flanked by two smaller ones in the same shape.

At the top are two side panels with Saints, and a top rectangular one depicting the Pietà.

The polyptych scheme, related to a fifteenth-century old fashioned scheme, was perhaps chosen by the friars of the convent: Lotto anyway developed it into a single composition, at least in the lower panels, with a scene set under a loggia with a coffered barrel vault in center and two minor vaults at the sides, while in the background is a landscape representation.

The niches in the background, featuring Byzantine-style mosaics, are inspired by earlier works by Giovanni Bellini, while the checkerboard pavement is an example of knowledge of the geometrical perspective introduced by the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century.

Lorenzo Lotto, one of the first great Venetian artists of the High Renaissance to see the art of central Italy and Rome, works with a number of artists in the Vatican Palace’s Stanze della Segnatura—the apartments of Pope Julius II—under the supervision of Raphael.

Like Leonardo’s earlier Milanese frescoes for the “Last Supper,” Raphael's frescoes in the Stanza are visually and contextually ultimate Florentine-Roman statements, whereas the oil paintings of Giorgione and Titian are most representative of Venetian concerns.

Lorenzo Lotto's introverted and peripatetic nature leads him to work in the provincial towns of northern Italy, especially in those of the provinces called the Marches, rather than in the large artistic centers.

He patterns his employment of strong, clear lighting after that in Giovanni Bellini's work, and always uses a perspectival grid overlaid with ornamental detail.

His characteristically austere and elegant Madonna and Child with Saints, painted in the 1500s, recalls the fifteenth-century religiosity of Northern European religious pictures, especially those of Albrecht Dürer.

After short stays in Florence and Bergamo, Lotto in about 1526 returns to Venice.

Lorenzo Lotto, having returned to Venice in 1525, produces such highly original works as his Portrait of Andrea Odoni in 1527 (which has the appearance of a much later Mannerist painting.)

The style is typical of Lotto's Venetian period, with denser tones, a softer chromatic range and atmospheric effects at the boundaries.

The horizontal format, which Lotto had already experimented for portraits of couples, in this case was adopted also for a single subject, a Humanist portrayed among his collection of antique marbles.

It has been however supposed that the pieces shown were not real, but, more likely, have a symbolic role alluding to the nature and the virtues of the subject.

The man sits next to a table, with a rich fur-lined jacket, and holds a statuette, which perhaps portrays a Diana of Ephesus.

The hands touching the chest is a sentimental theme typical of Lotto's works.

The table has also a book and some ancient coins.

Peripatetic Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto, now in his seventies, had found it increasingly difficult to earn a living.

Furthermore, in 1550 one of his works had had an unsuccessful auction in Ancona.

As recorded in his personal account book, this had deeply disillusioned him.

As he has always been a deeply religious man, he had ceased his wanderings in 1552 and taken refuge at the Holy Sanctuary at Loreto, becoming an oblate, or lay brother.

Since then, he has decorated the basilica of S. Maria and painted a Presentation of Christ in the Temple, for the Palazzo Apostolico in Loreto.

He dies in 1556 and is buried, at his request, in a Dominican habit.

He leaves a long sequence of much-admired portraits, including a series of riveting paintings done in the 3/4-length Venetian portrait mode.

Giorgio Vasari includes Lotto's biography in the third volume of his book Vite.

Lorenzo Lotto himself leaves many letters and a detailed notebook (Libro di spese diverse, 1538–1556), giving a certain insight in his life and work.

His influence is felt by many painters, including probably Giovanni Busi.