ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
NEW YORK---
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's "Pietà" demonstrates an enduring admiration for the plangent heroism of Michelangelo, evinced earlier in the famous Ugolino and his Sons, conceived during his study years in Rome, of which the Metropolitan owns the marble finished in 1867. 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.
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 552 [
More]
