Pietà
Michelangelo Buonarroti
1498-99
Vatican

Perhaps the quintessential version of the Pietà is this one; Michelangelo's Vatican Pietà, so well known because of the exquisite skill, precision, beauty, and sensuality of the piece. Generations of artists have copied the pose in their own renditions.

Michelangelo was questioned for his decision to represent Mary as youthful-- indeed she appears to be younger than her son. Michelangelo attributed her youth and beauty to divine intervention and to her virginity. Virgins appear younger, innocent, regardless of their age, he argued as recorded by Condivi: "Do you not know," he said, "that chaste women retain their fresh looks much longer than those who are not chaste. How much more, therefore, a virgin in whom not even the least unchaste desire that might work change in her body ever arose?" because of her divinity, Mary would be that much more youthful and beautiful, he concludes.(Hibbard p.48)

Though artists have copied this quintessential Michelangelan pose, he was not the first to employ it in a Pietà. Mary holding Jesus in her lap is first recorded in 15th Century northern European sculptures. Within a century, the pose was known in France and Italy.