Pietà

Abstract

Traces of the original polychromy of this small fifteenth-century sculpture of the Pietà survive. The head of the Madonna was added in a later restoration. This subject, the Pietà, the Virgin holding her dead son on her lap, was popular in Northern Europe in the fifteenth century, rare in Italy until Michelangelo's Vatican Pietà found many imitators. Because of the low tensile strength of the stone, the legs of Christ and the left arm of the Virgin have broken. The sculpture is currently housed in the Casa Museo Rodolfo Siviero in Florence. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.