Cleveland Museum of Art

Pietà

Wiktorya J. Gorynska

Date

1929

Medium

wood engraving

Culture

Poland, 20th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Twentieth-century artists, particularly those seeking to express religious feeling, often turned to Renaissance works of art as models. Although in reverse, the composition of this 20th-century pietà bears strong resemblance to Michelangelo’s 1498 sculpture. Both compositions are deeply mournful, capturing the sorrow of the mother's loss of her child, even while Wiktorya Gorynska’s print displays aspects of modern art such as flattened space and simplified, abstract forms. Gorynska added unique elements, such as the striped shroud and the kneeling figure of Saint John the Evangelist at left.

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