Pieta (SAU 23) Planner

Between The Descent from the Cross and The Entombment, Christ was lamented… most especially by His mother. The term Pieta, derived from the Italian word for ‘pity’, is given to the third—and final--type of depiction of the grieving BVM. In a Pieta, Mary cradles the body of Jesus on her lap just as she had cradled him as a child. Here, in a somewhat unusual departure from more familiar versions in sculpture or painting, Mary is seen sitting not on the ground at the foot of the cross but on a tomb (not fully visible in this detail). Tombs cut horizontally into cliff faces as in 1st century Palestine were unfamiliar to Western European artists of the Middle Ages. Gothic artists portrayed what they knew: stone sarcophagi. That the tomb as pictured would be too small for the figure of Christ is another hallmark of medieval art. It is emotion not accuracy that counts: The scene captures an intimate moment between mother and son and evokes pity in the viewer. + Image Credit (SAU 23): Detail of an antique NeoGothic image of the Pieta from a holy card printed in chromolithography with gilt accents, and published by the Socièté de St. Augustin, Bruges, Belgium, last quarter of the 19th century. From the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera.