Pietá

The iconographic theme of the Pieta has its ideological starting point in the central European cult to the virgin in the liturgical service of Maundy Thursday. This peculiar form of representation came from the areas between Austria and Bohemia at the end of the 14th century, with a great success in the South of Europe. Its sculptural manifestations are encompassed in the group called "Beautiful Pietas", stunning figures, with an intense and delicate expression, covered in clothing with abundant pleats and curved decorative rhythms through which they are able to give a refined movement to the bodies. The work shown here, of central European origin, comes from the chapel that the bishop of Palencia, Sancho de Rojas had in the cloister of the Monastery of San Benito el Real in Valladolid, later known as Chapel of the Fuensaldaña. It was donated by the king John II of Castile at the request of the prelate at the beginning of the 15th century. The composition presents the Virgin as a girl with a tender expression, scared and tearful, dress with a widely pleated cape and a veil with undulating border and folded in its drape, something repeated in this kind of creations. Mary has on her lap a dead Christ, naturalist in his anatomic treatment and rigid in his position, truly following the descriptions of the mystic text of that period, such as the famous Revelation from the Virgin to Saint Bridget of Sweden.