Pity is a Rebel Passion. Jenny Saville’s Contemporary Pietà
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines six works by contemporary British artist Jenny Saville (featured in her exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro in Venice) to reflect on the iconographic motif of the Pietà. A brief tracing of the iconographic tradition reveals that this theme does not stem from a literary source, as the scene of the Virgin Mary cradling her dead son does not appear in the Gospels. The origins of the motif are, therefore, visual; it traces back to wooden sculptures that appeared in Germany in the 14th century, known as Vesperbild (“Vespers images”), a name referring to the time of day when, according to tradition, Christ was taken down from the cross. Jenny Saville plays with this iconographic tradition to reconfigure it: her Pietà figures appear faceless, bear the hieratic visage of an ancient Greek sculpture, or take the form of a man holding a dead child. She multiplies arms and erases parts of the mothers’ and children’s bodies, thereby evoking an ancient mater dolorosa: Hecuba. The persistence of the motif of the dispossessed mother, across the past and present and throughout all artistic mediums, exposes the terrible, enduring logic of war.
Author: Wedekin, Maribele
Language: English
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221932273
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