A Pietà shows the Virgin Mary with the dead Christ lying across her lap, just after his body has been taken down from the cross. The subject can be carved in stone or wood, or painted.
The best known is the marble Michelangelo made in 1498 and 1499, which stands today in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
These images take their name from the Italian word for pity, pietà, itself taken from the Latin pietas. No Gospel describes the moment. The evangelists tell how Christ's body was lowered from the cross and laid in a tomb, never that Mary held it on her knees.
The scene was invented much later, by artists and by the believers who prayed before their work. It first took shape in Germany in the early fourteenth century, long before Michelangelo.
It grew out of an older subject, the Lamentation, where a crowd of mourners weeps around the body. The Pietà strips that crowd down to the mother and her son. Some versions add Saint John or Mary Magdalene, but they stay at the edge of the picture.
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A German image for private prayer
In German such a figure is often called a Vesperbild, an image for Vespers, the evening prayer of the church…
What You'll Discover
Who paid for the marble in Rome.
Why Mary looks younger than her son.
Why Michelangelo signed this work and no other.
What happened inside St. Peter's in 1972.
Who took up the Pietà after him.