Pietà

Ludovico Brea's Pietà, painted around 1490 and now in the Louvre, depicts the compassion scene — the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Christ taken down from the cross — in the style of this Niçois painter who was the most important master of the Ligurian-Provençal school in the late fifteenth century. Brea was born in Nice, at that time part of the Duchy of Savoy, and he absorbed a synthesis of Flemish naturalism, Italian compositional thinking, and the local Ligurian tradition. His Pietà demonstrates the emotional directness characteristic of his style — the Virgin's grief, the weight of the dead Christ — rendered with both formal dignity and genuine pathos.

Oil on panel with the Flemish-influenced technique transmitted through the Ligurian school. The Pietà composition focuses on the intimate dyad of the grieving Virgin and the dead Christ — Mary's face bent over her son's, her hands supporting his limp body.