Pietà

This Pietà is small, about half a metre across and wider than it is tall, the size of a picture made for prayer at home. The Virgin and Saint John hold the dead Christ between them, with the crown of thorns close by. Behind them the land runs a long way back. The three crosses stand on the hill of Golgotha, a walled city lies near it, and mountains close the view.

The panel reached the Louvre in November 1893, bought from the Paris dealer Charles Sedelmeyer with money left to the museum by a benefactor, Laure Sévène. Sedelmeyer was already offering it as a Massys, the old spelling of the painter's name. The Louvre entered it more cautiously, as Flemish school of the early 16th century. Today the museum catalogues it as the work of Quinten Metsys himself.