The American Pietà

Pietà is Italian for pity or compassion. It names a devotional image of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus after he has been taken down from the cross. The Gospels tell of the burial but do not describe Mary holding him, which is part of why artists have made the scene their own for centuries. The best-known version is Michelangelo's marble in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, carved in 1498 and 1499, the only work he ever signed.

The American link is the Gold Star. During the First World War, families hung service flags in their windows, a blue star for each member serving and a gold star for each who had died. Grace Darling Seibold, whose aviator son George was lost in that war, helped found American Gold Star Mothers in Washington in 1928. The group still observes Gold Star Mother's Day on the last Sunday of September.

In the picture Mary sits upright in a blue mantle over a rust-red robe, her head covered in a tan veil and bowed, her eyes on her son's face. He lies across her lap with his head fallen back against her arm, a cloth at his hips and a dark wound in his side, one hand hanging open toward the floor. Behind them, at upper left, an American flag shows its stars and stripes in dim brown-gold light.