Pietà by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1864
The government of Napoleon III kept Carpeaux busy with official projects, involving decorative sculpture and portraiture, but it is clear from the evidence of the private moments that he occasionally seized to sketch sacred subjects, as here, that he would have been one of the most powerful of all religious artists had he been freer to exercise this repertory. Mounding the clay pellets and pressing them into shape in mere seconds, his entire attention is on the Virgin Mary’s maternal embrace, to the virtual exclusion of Christ’s legs. A related drawing in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, is dated 1864. (The Met, NY)
