Pietà from the château de Tarascon

This 15th century Provençal painting depicts the theme of the Pietà. The mourning Virgin cradles the body of her son Jesus on her knees. She is surrounded by John and the three Marys, including Mary Magdalene, who is recognisable from her loose hair and her perfume bottle. The scene highlights pain (sorrowful expressions, crown of thorns, presence of blood, and so on) and prompts reflection on suffering and death.

The painting is likely the one that decorated the "queen's new chamber" at the château de Tarascon in 1457. If this is the case, it would have been commissioned by King René (1409–1480), Duke of Anjou, Count of Provence, and King of Naples and Sicily.

The artwork was in the Tarascon hospice in 1910 when it was acquired by the Louvre Museum and subsequently deposited at the Musée de Cluny. At that time, in the background, a wide landscape dominated by the silhouette of Jerusalem was laid out (between Christ and Saint John, by the right arm of Christ, a brown fragment of this addition from the 16th–17th centuries had been preserved). It was removed in 1950, revealing a gold background, delicately traversed by printed scrollwork and brightened with halos stamped with small geometric patterns and flowers.

The work draws inspiration from the compositions of the great masters of Flemish painting, particularly Rogier van der Weyden, and even more directly from the Pietà of Avignon, painted by Enguerrand Quarton for the collegiate church of Villeneuve-les-Avignon, which is now in the Louvre Museum. More character-laden, with a somewhat hard outline, but filled with the soft light characteristic of painters in the South of France, the Pietà de Tarascon could be the work of the Dombet brothers’ workshop based in Aix-en-Provence. The artwork is displayed in the museum's new galleries, following restoration in 2021.