PIETÀ (art). — It seems that the figurative model of the P., conceived as the weeping of the Madonna over the dead Body of Christ, crowned with thorns and lying in her lap, was established first in German Gothic art. This is confirmed by some wooden sculptures from southern Germany, dating from shortly after 1300. This concise concept of P., which was further used frequently in Nordic art in the 14th century, is rare in medieval Italian art, where the first depictions of the weeping over the dead Christ appear in scenes with many figures, evoking the moment after the Deposition from the Cross and before the burial of Our Lord, and are often inserted into the cycle of the Passion.
Thus, in Giotto’s fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel (Padua) and in the so-called *P. of S. Remigio*, an anonymous masterpiece (Uffizi, Florence) which Vasari attributed to the imaginary Giotto.
In Italian art, a very early depiction of the weeping over the dead Christ, conceived more as a subject for sacred meditation than as an image of the Deposition, is found in the panel dated 1365 and signed by Giovanni da Milano. It is already a rare Italian example of a true P. different in concept from the scene of lamentation over the body of Christ lying under the Cross. In the 15th century, Italian depictions of the weeping over the dead Christ tend to simplify into a synthetic drama, with the number of figures present at the scene—i.e., the pious women, the various saints, the disciples, and the donors often depicted in 14th-century paintings—steadily decreasing. By the final stage of this iconographic development, besides the Madonna, St. John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene sometimes appear, and rarely St. Nicodemus and angels. Thus, it is only in the second half of the 15th century that the true iconographic model of the P. is realized. This concise scene of sorrow was often treated by the Paduan-Ferrarese painters of the 15th century, as it particularly suited the late-Gothic spirit of their art. Thus, we recall the numerous tragic *Pietàs* by Carlo Crivelli (Galleries in Boston and Detroit, Metropolitan Museum in New York, Brera Collection in Milan, Vatican Pinacoteca). Even in his *Pietà* in the Louvre, Cosimo Tura follows the concept of Carlo Crivelli, as does the panel in the Museo Correr (Venice), where for the first time in Italy the gentle lament of the solitary Mary is expressed in the form found in 14th-century German sculptures. To this scheme are also connected: the *Pietà* by Ercole (Correggio) (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and that by Francesco del Cossa (Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris), in which St. Francis, rather than taking part in Mary’s lament, observes her weeping from a distance. A very typical form is presented by Mantegna’s *Pietà*, a masterpiece of foreshortening (Brera, Milan). To illustrate the concept of the *Pietà* adopted in the same period by central Italian art, one may cite the tondo by Perugino (Uffizi) and another by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Berlin Museum. In the very early years of the 16th century, both Francesco Francia (lunette in the National Gallery, London) and Fra Bartolomeo della Porta in his famous canvas (Palazzo Pitti, Florence) presented the drama of the *Pietà* in a form distinctly detached from the Deposition. It was in such an iconographic climate that Michelangelo’s *Pietà* (Vatican Basilica), commissioned on 27 Aug. 1497, was conceived. The Buonarroti later returned to the subject of this youthful masterpiece throughout the course of his long life, leaving us three other marble sculptures, all differently conceived: the *Pietà of Palestrina*, believed to have been executed around 1540, the *Pietà of Florence Cathedral* of 1550, and the *Rondanini Pietà*, a work found unfinished in 1564 in the house where the master died. Among the various *Pietàs* inspired by Michelangelo’s (Marcello Venusti, Baccio Bandinelli, etc.), the most notable is that by Sebastiano del Piombo (Museo Civico, Viterbo). Also connected to these is that by Sodoma (Galleria Borghese, Rome). A *Pietà* is also attributed to Titian (Accademia, Venice).
In its stylistically very different language, the Baroque depicted the weeping over the dead Christ with great frequency according to the pathetic concept of the *Pietà*. Thus, first of all, it should be noted that from the Caravaggist current in Rome there are three *Pietàs* by Orazio Borgianni (Galleria Spada, Palazzo Venezia Museum, and the convent of the Crocigeri). A *Pietà* by Rubens is in the Galleria Borghese. To the classicizing current of early Baroque belong the various *Pietàs* by Annibale Carracci (Doria Gallery, Rome; Louvre, Paris; National Museum, Naples), the *Madonna of the Pietà* with the patron saints of Bologna, a masterpiece by Guido Reni (Pinacoteca, Bologna), and the *Pietà* by Bernardo Strozzi, in the collection of the Accademia Ligustica in Genoa. The florid Baroque produced the *Pietà* by Antonio Montauti, a well-known marble sculpture adorning the Corsini crypt in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Rome; 19th-century art produced that of P. Tenerani in the Torlonia chapel of the same basilica and that of Dupré in the cemetery of Siena. Even the art of this century has depicted the *Pietà*, both in the bronze doors of Milan Cathedral, cast by Ludovico Pogliaghi, and in numerous marble sculptures, among which is that by Ermenegildo Luppi, formerly in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome and now in Dublin, and another by L. Andreotti in the Shrine of Santa Croce in Florence. — See pls. XCII–XCIII.