Pietà

This tempera panel shows the Virgin cradling the dead body of Christ, a subject frequently treated in fifteenth-century religious painting. The figures are pressed close to the picture plane within a shallow space, which heightens the sense of intimacy and restrained grief. Lippi handles light and outline with evident delicacy, and the modest scale suits a work meant for private prayer.

It is thought to have been part of a small altarpiece for personal devotion. Its sculptural modelling draws on low relief, a manner associated with Donatello, whose work shaped many Florentine painters of the period. Some scholars connect it with a painting that Giorgio Vasari records Lippi making as a gift from Cosimo the Elder to Pope Eugene IV, then residing in Florence, though this identification remains uncertain.

Its significance lies in showing how early Quattrocento painters borrowed sculptural ideas and clear spatial construction to convey religious emotion with restraint.

Painter

Filippo Lippi

Date

1437

Medium

tempera, panel

Dimensions

86 × 107 cm

Museum

Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Genre

religious art

Depicts

Jesus Christ, Mary, aureola, woman, man

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