Page of Pietà by UNKNOWN MASTER, German in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

Pixel Size(1026,942)

Pietà

c. 1400
Painted limestone, height 75 cm
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

This Pietà - an example of the most popular Gothic image types - comes from the Seeon monastery near Salzburg. It is superbly structured so as to emphasize the Virgin's gaze as she tries to balance her big, awkward baby's corps on her knees. Two separate ideas, maternal love and death, are combined in the Pietà to form a three-dimensional cult-image that could be placed on the altar. The sense of heavy weight combined with the materiality of the textures and liquid tears visible in the image made the sense of touch all-pervasive in the Pietà.