The most famous of four Pietàs by Michelangelo is a sculpture at Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.
1635–45; < Italian: literally, pity < Latin pietās piety; cf. pity
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The most elucidating superimposes a Pietà by Anne-Louis Girodet, David’s little-known pupil, over David’s “Marat.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 21, 2025
Last year, the local alderman threatened to downzone the church property, reducing its value to developers, and its Pietà had to be moved from the church with a police escort.
From Slate • Jul. 13, 2023
I took all the time in the world at the Pietà.
From Washington Post • Nov. 21, 2022
A Tuymans portrait, from 1992, features in the old masters’ “Suffering” section, near a Pietà.
From New York Times • Sep. 20, 2022
Michael Angelo numbered four and twenty years when he had finished his Pietà.
From Famous European Artists by Bolton, Sarah K.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
