GIOVANNI DA MILANO
(active 1350-69, Milano, Firenze)

Pietà

1365
Tempera on panel, 110 x 46 cm
Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

Giovanni da Milano was, as his name suggests, an outsider from Lombardy working at Florence. His Pietà, which shows the dead Christ upheld by the Virgin, Mary Magdalen, and St John, is one of the earliest representations of this subject painted in Florence. The manner in which Christ's body is raised by the grieving figures is intended to remind the observer of the suffering that Christ endured for humanity.