Pietà
The original
Every other work in this collection carries a credit line reproduced from its holding institution’s own record. This one cannot: it is privately held, and no museum publishes an artist line, a date, a medium or an accession number for it. Saying so is more honest than leaving the space blank.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Mary's black cloak swallows her head — mourning, not serene devotion. Her eyes are red-rimmed, filled with sorrow and accusation, not acceptance. Around her, angels robed in every color of the rainbow recall the sign God showed Noah: hope circling a dead son. She does not offer Christ's body outward — she clutches it.
A crown of thorns lies at his feet on a blood-stained cloth. Bouguereau painted the scene in 1876, the year after his own son Georges died at sixteen; a stone urn in it reads IN MEMORIAM DILECTI MEI FILII GEORGII...
Sources: Kara Lysandra Ross, 'William Bouguereau and his Religious Works,' Art Renewal Center · Genesis 9:13, Douay-Rheims (primary text, cited by locator) · Damien Bartoli with Fred Ross, 'Biography of William Bouguereau', Art Renewal Center · Art Renewal Center catalogue record (Bouguereau catalogue raisonné, Bartoli/Ross), 'Pieta' · Warburg Institute Iconographic Database, School of Advanced Study, University of London — record for Bouguereau, 1876 (inscribed on the vase)
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 3,059 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.