Pieta
El Greco
1587-97
Stavros Niarchos Collection, Paris

The surrealist color and elongation of digits and limbs makes this rendition of the Pieta awash in sensual languor and compassion. Note the contorted compression of Christ's body, from hip to knee. Unlike Michelangelo's seamless conflation of realistic scale in his sculpted version of the pose, El Greco's treatment of Christ calls attention to the fact that Mary is cradling, quite awkwardly, a full grown man in her lap.

This painting was copied by John Singer Sergeant nearly three centuries later.