The Pietà

The Pietà — the Virgin cradling the dead Christ — was one of the most emotionally charged subjects in Christian art, invented as a sculptural type in northern Europe before being adopted by Italian painters. Schiavone's version from around 1458 in the National Gallery brings this subject into the Paduan quattrocento context, inflecting it with the angular, sculptural severity of Squarcione's workshop. The subject demanded emotional restraint coexisting with extreme grief, and Schiavone's tightly controlled manner suited this demanding paradox of simultaneous sorrow and composure.

The compositional challenge of the Pietà — organising the horizontal dead Christ across the vertical Virgin's lap — is addressed through careful geometric planning. Schiavone's hard-edged modelling gives Christ's body the quality of carved stone, appropriate to the sculptural source of the type.