Pieta with a Carmelite Monk

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the talented painter Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano worked in Venice, Vicenza and Udine. His “Pieta`” was painted for the chapter hall of the Carmelite Monastery in Venice. Christ’s nearest and dearest are grieving over the body of their dead teacher. They are outwardly restrained in the expression of their grief, but each is gripped by profound emotion: Mary is gazing at Christ’s face, John is praying devoutly, Nicodemus is retrained in his grief, Mary Magdalene has fallen on her knees and is stroking the teacher’s cold hand, while Mary, the wife of Cleophas, is inconsolable. Joseph of Arimathaea and the Carmelite monk who commissioned the painting complete the composition. The action unfolds against a landscape with a view of the artist’s native town, Conegliano, its walls and imposing towers.