Federico Barocci Workshop (Urbino, 1535 - 1612) "Pietà: sorrow and lament on the death of Christ". Oil on canvas. 93 x 73 cm. Exquisite canvas, very much of the Italian school, which invites silence and reverence. Devotion, colours full of delicacy and tenderness, nuanced out of respect for the moment that is being portrayed, where "the light almost dissolves the drawn forms"... "in delicate chromatic reverberations". This is how Barocci and his workshop choose to make themselves felt in this painting. The canvas shows the transition between two moments: the Pietà -on the one hand- and a funeral lament -on the other- , similar in content, but the two different scenes are interspersed between the Descent from the Cross and the Holy Burial. The Pietà shows the inert body of the crucified Christ resting in the arms of his mother, who receives him with contained pain. In the lament or weeping over the body of the dead Christ, his body is placed on a shroud (already in the painting) and from there it passes to the stone of the anointing (the angels, with extreme and mystical delicacy, move the body towards the stone, in the foreground, with the symbols of the Passion). Around the body are arranged all those who will burst into laments and sobs, here still contained. The face and the shape of the body of Christ is very similar to that of the Christ of the Descent from the Cross, a painting almost 5 meters high, by Barocci, which we can see today in the cathedral of Perugia, and which was painted in the last quarter of the 16th century. The Pietà does not appear in the Gospels, its origin is the mystical literature of the late Middle Ages, although from an art point of view it seems to derive from the theme of the Virgin of Humility, where the Child has been replaced by the inert body of the Crucified Christ. It is derived from the lamentations before the dead Son, a theme of Byzantine origin that concentrates the attention on the drama of the Passion in a realistic and moving sense, giving rise to loving and sorrowful contemplation. Whether it be Our Lady of Mercy, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Anguish, Our Lady of the Passion, Weeping over the body of the dead Christ, Lamentation over the dead Christ, Planctus Mariae..... These are all scenes of popular fervor and of a mystical and religious attitude that invite us to meditate and to concentrate our attention on the drama of the Passion, and on loving contemplation, with a realistic and moving sense, of the adoration of the Redeemer by his mother and by us as faithful worshippers. This is a scene that invites us to ascend on the path of our personal spiritual life, through meditation and contemplation and through keeping silence.