Pietà (after Francesco Francia)

Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen's Pietà (after Francesco Francia) is a copy or interpretation of a work by the Bolognese Renaissance painter Francesco Francia — a devotional subject showing the Virgin supporting the dead Christ after the Deposition from the Cross. Orpen's engagement with Renaissance religious painting through copies was consistent with the Pre-Raphaelite tradition of learning from and engaging with early Italian masters. The Pietà as subject — the grief of the Mother over her dead Son — was one of the most emotionally charged in Christian iconography, painted repeatedly from Michelangelo to Bellini.

Copying Francia requires Orpen to work within a different technical register from her own painting — engaging with the egg tempera or early oil technique of the late fifteenth century. Her Pre-Raphaelite training, which itself drew inspiration from early Italian painting, gave her tools for approaching the specific qualities of Renaissance religious painting: the clear, jewel-like colors, the careful anatomical observation, the specific quality of early Renaissance emotional expressiveness. Her interpretation would blend faithful copying with her own painterly sensibility.