The Pietà
c. 1460-1480
Southern Netherlands
20 x 20 x 5 cm; pale, buff-veined alabaster. Small chip losses to the stone across Christ’s feet, which are missing their toes, his right hand, and the high points of the crown of thorns.
The whitish hue, mottled appearance and pale veining of the alabaster from which our group was carved accords very closely with a group of fifteenth-century alabaster reliefs thought to have been carved in the southern Netherlands and western Germany. Despite the loss of any original polychromy and the minor chip losses to Christ’s feet and crown of thorns, our Pietà is perhaps the best-preserved example of its kind and iconography to have survived anywhere from this fruitful period of alabaster use among the sculptors of the Low Countries.
