oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
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Pietà, 1545 oil on canvas Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan |
An entry in Lotto's account book, dated February 1545, clearly refers to this painting. The artist wrote that the prioress of a nunnery in Treviso had commissioned him to paint "a pietà, with the Virgin swooning in the arms of Saint John, the dead Christ in his mother's lap, and two angels supporting Our Lord, one at his head and the other at his feet." The encircling darkness heightens this raw expression of physical and emotional suffering.