Pieta
Unknown · 1485-1500
The Virgin holds the dead body of her son across her lap, the scene of grief that French sculptors of the late fifteenth century called the Virgin of Pity. The group is small, about seventy centimetres high, carved in Burgundian limestone with traces of its original colours. Look at the contrast between the heavy folds of Mary's mantle, which gather the composition into a stable block, and the limp, angular body of Christ across her knees. Groups like this were made for side chapels, where they invited worshippers to share the mother's sorrow at close quarters.
The Pieta comes from the chapel of Saint John the Baptist at the chateau of Montmorot at Fraignot in the Cote-d'Or, an old Templar commandery handed in 1314 to the Knights of Saint John, the order later known as the Knights of Malta. The estate was sold at the Revolution, but the statue stayed in its chapel until the late nineteenth century, when it entered the collection of Georges Potey at the chateau of Minot. It then belonged to Doctor Joseph Chompret in Paris, who gave it to the Louvre in 1944 while keeping it for his lifetime.
Did You Know? The statue stood for five centuries in a chapel that had belonged in turn to the Templars and the Knights of Malta.
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