Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon

Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon is an oil painting of the mid-15th century that is considered one of the outstanding works of art of the late Middle Ages.

The Pietà, where the dead Christ is supported by his grieving mother, is a common theme of late-medieval religious art, but this is one of the most striking depictions, "perhaps the greatest masterpiece produced in France in the 15th century" (Edward Lucie-Smith).

[2] The curved back form of Christ's body is highly original, and the stark, motionless dignity of the other figures is very different from Italian or Netherlandish depictions.

[3] The bare background landscape falls away to a horizon broken by the buildings of Jerusalem, but instead of a sky there is plain gold leaf with stamped and incised haloes, borders and inscriptions.

The city had fallen to the Ottomans in 1453, a few years before the estimated creation of the painting and the main subject (Pieta) can be considered as a lament to the fall of the eastern part of Christendom.