Large Round Pietà

Look just below the beard of God the Father, where his head meets his dead son's. A small white dove sits there, the Holy Spirit, so all three persons of the Trinity share this one tight circle of gold. The Virgin, in deep blue, looks up into her son's face, Saint John in red presses a hand to his own cheek, and a crowd of small angels pushes in from the left. Blood runs from the wound in Christ's side and drips from his hands. The panel was painted between about 1397 and 1404, probably in Dijon, and the Louvre gives it to Jean Malouel only as an attribution, since no document names him. In 2012 the museum bought a smaller panel of the dead Christ that is also linked to Malouel, and scholars point to the same long, supple arms in both.