PIETA

 

When most of us hear the word PIETA, we think of Michelangelo’s famous image in St. Peter’s Basicila at the Vatican. It is perhaps one of the most beautiful works of art I encountered in my two years living in Europe. But there are many lovely replicas which can be just as powerful- especially in modern times.

The Pietà is one of the three primary representations of the Virgin Mary in sorrow; along with the Stabat Mater (stands the mother) and the Mater Dolorosa (Mother of Sorrows). These representations were prevalent in Christian iconography from the thirteenth century onwards – in painting, sculpture and musical compositions as in the case of the Stabat Mater.

 A pietà  ("piety", "compassion")  depicts the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus. As such, it is a particular form of the Lamentation of Christ, a scene from the Passion of Christ found in cycles of the Life of Christ. When Christ and the Virgin are surrounded by other figures from the New Testament, the subject is strictly called a lamentation in English, although pietà is often used for this as well, and is the normal term in Italian.

The pietà developed in Germany (where it is called the "Vesperbild") about 1300, reached Italy about 1400, and was especially popular in Central European Andachtsbilder.  (Remember this word from past Blogs?  devotional images designed as aids for prayer or contemplation.)

Many German and Polish 15th-century examples in wood greatly emphasize Christ's wounds. The Deposition of Christ and the Lamentation or Pietà form the 13th of the Stations of the Cross, as well as one of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin.

Early Pietàs often made Christ’s body much smaller than the Virgin Mary’s, signifying the idea of the mother holding her dead child in her arms. His wounds were also very prominent in such works, to reinforce the suffering He endured on the cross.

Although the pietà most often shows the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, there are other compositions, including those where God the Father participates in holding Jesus (see gallery below). In Spain the Virgin often holds up one or both hands, sometimes with Christ's body slumped to the floor.

One of my favorites- though so many modern works of the pieta show great pathos, certainly  to peoples who have suffered from war and privation of freedom - is by Wiktoria Gorynska, a Polish artist, who painted this in 1929.  For me it represents the  stripped uniform we see in photographs of the prisoners of war released in WWII.  It is as if our Mother takes  one of them into her grieving arms.

"I took my tender Child on my lap and looked at Him, but He was dead: I looked at Him again and again and could have shattered into a thousand pieces from those mortal wounds it received. It gave many bottomless sighs: the eyes shed many heartbroken bitter tears, my appearance became utterly miserable.”

                         Heinrich Suso, The Exemplar (1295 — 1366)

  IMAGES:

            Top -  Antanos Kmieliaush, Lithuania  

                                1990

            Left -  Krishen Khanna – India

            Rt.  -  Bogdon Cierpisz -  Poland   1980

            Left-   Gloria Todd Jones  American  1990

            Rt.     Wiktoria Gorynska Poland  1929

            Left. - Jan Karan-  Czech Rep.  1995  

            Rt.   -  Wladystaw Skoczylas - Poland  1934

 

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