Notes on the Avignon Pietà

Abstract

THE Avignon Piet'a (Fig. 1) is to be distinguished from most earlier Pieta's.' The theme of the Virgin supporting the body of her dead Son had from its earliest appearances in mediaeval art and literature been expressed in a highly emotional manner. Alost often the Virgin had been imagined clutching the body of her Son as if unable to relinquish Him to the tomb, or dreaming that she held Hin in her lap once more as an infant. The tone is frequently violent, shrill, or morbid whereas the Avignon Pieta exhibits an ordered restraint. At the center of the painting the hands of the Virgin, rather than holding the body of her Son, are pressed together in prayer; their axial form is repeated in the larger, similar form of her upper body, also a narrow, upright triangle. The torso of Christ is horizontal, its direction extending to include the ministering hands of the Magdalene, holding the jar of ointment, and of John, removing the Crown of Thorns. The arrangement is stable and self-contained, suggesting associations with the liturgy rather than the theater or novelistic accounts of the Passion such as that of PseudoBonaventura. Less regular forms, especially the bending and shadowed face of the Virgin and the long, slanting legs and right arm of Christ, modify the character of the center; their psychic equivalent is a pathos which alters but does not disrupt the prevailing dignity, as when a liturgical ritual is informed by strong personal feeling. The following notes attempt to provide sources for the Avignon Pieta in the history of religious thought and imagery.