MASTER of the Pietà

Italian painter, active in Siena. Millard Meiss in his 1946 publication assembled a group of seven paintings, ascribing them to the same anonymous hand and giving an eighth to his workshop. The group included two panels portraying the Pietà: one in the Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon and the other in the Institute of Arts, Detroit; then the earliest known Sienese treatments of the subject, their author was thus christened the “Master of the Pietà.” Despite this moniker, the Crucifixion was the subject most frequently depicted by the artist; Meiss listed five treatments of the theme, to which a sixth was added in 2001.