Pieta in the Cloisters, Sept. 2007

Pieta (Vesperbild)
Poplar, polychromy, and gilding
Germany, Rhineland, about 1375-1400

Accession # 48.85

The Virgin mourning over her son became a popular devotional subject in the later Middle Ages. Rigid in death, Christ's body bears the marks of his Passion. The figure's small scale may reflect the writings of the German mystics, who believed that the Virgin, in the agony of her grief, imagined that she was holding Christ as a baby once again in her arms.

Text from the Cloisters label.