Creazione (Lotto)

The Creazione attributed to Giovanni Francesco Capoferri is not a painting in the conventional sense but a work of intarsia — decorative woodwork — designed after compositions by Lorenzo Lotto for the choir stalls of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. Lotto's designs, executed in inlaid wood by Capoferri, are counted among the most ambitious decorative programmes of the Italian Renaissance. The Creation scene translates the theological grandeur of Genesis into intricate patterns of contrasting woods, demonstrating the Italian Renaissance conviction that no medium was beneath artistic ambition. These choir stalls remain one of the great collaborative achievements of sixteenth-century Lombard artistic culture.

The intarsia technique uses contrasting wood veneers to create tonal variation and figurative imagery without paint. Spatial depth is achieved through carefully selected grain directions and color contrast. Lotto's original designs imposed a sophisticated compositional clarity that Capoferri rendered with extraordinary technical precision.