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Commentary: The Pietà, a representation of the Virgin supporting the dead Christ in a pose that poignantly recalls the image of her holding the Child, is a motif that first appears in Germanic art of the fourteenth century. Here the figures are set in a landscape which includes Christ’s sepulcher at right, a Gothic city representing Jerusalem, and distant snowcapped mountains.
The Pietà by a follower of Konrad Witz evidently was the model for the French variant (also in The Frick Collection) by a later artist who added a kneeling donor to the composition. Both paintings — individually and in their relation to each other — present many unsolved mysteries. The national origins of the two artists, the patrons who commissioned the panels, and the locations in which the works were executed are all unknown. Northern European characteristics seem stronger in the earlier version, which was long attributed to Witz himself. This Pietà is more dramatically intense, more emotional in the handling of the sharp-featured faces, the angular drapery folds, and the colder tonality of colors and light.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
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