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Pietro Perugino
Pietà
1490 Oil Painting
Uffizi Gallery

The Pietà theme became popular during the beginning of the fourteenth century and is curious because there is no biblical doctrine which accounts for Mary holding her dead son after his crucifixion and death.¹ This apocryphal account demonstrates a shift in religious culture where the church starts to humanize Christ. The German interpretations of the theme tended to be more distorted and emphasizing the gruesome nature of Jesus’ death. By the time of the Renaissance, artist like Michaelangeo turned the apocryphal scene into the image of beauty. ¹Joanna E. Ziegler. “Michelangelo and the Medieval Pieta: The Sculpture of Devotion or the Art of Sculpture?” Gesta, Vol. 34. No. 1 (1995) 28-36