Pietà

religious

Luis de Morales was especially fond of the theme of the Piet, in which he expressed the pathos of Christ's suffering and His Mother's grief as she holds the body of her dead son. On this occasion the artist focuses his attention on the composition, the central axis of which is the stake on which Christ was crucified. By presenting only the upper part of the Fifth Anguish, avoiding the whole of Christ's body in His Mother's lap, Morales stresses the emotional charge of the scene.

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About the Artist

Luis de Morales

1520 – 1586

Spanish painter. He worked for most of his life in Badajoz, a town on the Portuguese border, and his style-formed away from the influence of the court or great religious and artistic centres such as Seville - is highly distinctive. His pictures are usually fairly small and he concentrated on devotional images. He painted numerous versions of the Virgin and Child, sometimes with the infant St John, and touching visions inspired by the theme Ecce Homo, which are among his most popular works. The piety of his work has earned him the nickname 'El Divino'. His style owes something to Netherlandish art, but his misty modelling seems to derive more from Leonardo da Vinci.

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