The donors are Pons de Gontaut and his brother Armand, Bishop of Sarlat, in whose family funerary chapel this sculpture and the Entombment originally stood. Their coats of arms were held by the angels in the Entombment scene.
#93. Body Language: Educator's Introduction: Pietà with Donors
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Artwork Details
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Title:Pietà with Donors
Date:ca. 1515
Geography:Made in Biron, Dordogne, France
Culture:French
Medium:Limestone, traces of polychromy
Dimensions:Overall: 43 3/8 x 92 1/2 x 22 in. (110.2 x 235 x 55.9 cm)
Classification:Sculpture-Stone
Credit Line:Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1916
Accession Number:16.31.1
Guillaume de Gontaut-Biron, marquis de Biron, Biron, France; Jacques Seligmann, Paris and New York (sold 1907); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), London and New York (from 1907)
Vitry, Paul. "Les Sculptures du Château de Biron." Les Arts 3, no. 27 (March 1904). pp. 9–13.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Year Ending December 31, 1907." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 38 (1907). p. 18.
Fry, Roger Eliot. "Sculptures from the Château de Biron." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, o.s., 3, no. 7 (July 1908). pp. 134–40.
Michel, André. Histoire de l'art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens jusqu'à nos jours: Volume IV, La Renaissance. Vol. Part 2. Paris: Armand Colin et Cie., 1911. p. 596.
Breck, Joseph. Catalogue of Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance Sculpture. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1913. no. 156, pp. 147–50, fig. 156.
"Mr. Morgan's Recent Gift." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 11, no. 3 (March 1916). pp. 56–58.
Breck, Joseph, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Brief Guide to the Art of the Renaissance, Medieval and Earlier Periods. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1918. p. 5.
"The Pierpont Morgan Gift." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13, no. 1 (January 1918). p. 8.
Breck, Joseph, and Meyric R. Rogers. The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Handbook. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1925. pp. 136–37, fig. 76, ill. p. 135.
Chase, George H., and Chandler Rathfon Post. A History of Sculpture. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1925. p. 243.
Breck, Joseph, and Meyric R. Rogers. The Pierpont Morgan Wing: A Handbook. 2nd ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929. pp. 136–37, fig. 76, ill. p. 135.
Blumenthal, George. "The New Cloisters." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 30, no. 5 (May 1935). p. 100.
"Les déclassements qui regularisent ou facilitent les enlèvements." Les Pierres de la France 1, no. 3 (1937). pp. 157–59, fig. 98.
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Rorimer, James J. "Recent Reinstallations of Medieval Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 6, no. 7 (March 1948). p. 206.
Forsyth, William H. "Medieval Statues of the Pietà in the Museum." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 11, no. 7 (March 1953). pp. 182–83.
Roudié, Paul. "Les mises au tombeau de Bordeaux." Revue Historique de Bordeaux et du Département de la Gironde 4 (1953). p. 322.
Phillips, John Goldsmith. "The Renaissance Galleries." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 12, no. 6 (February 1954). pp. 147, 164.
Rorimer, James J., and William Holmes Forsyth. "The Medieval Galleries." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 12, no. 6 (February 1954). p. 121.
Seligman, Germain. Merchants of Art: 1880–1960, Eighty Years of Professional Collecting. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961. p. 70.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Guide to the Collections: Medieval Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1962. fig. 63.
Pressouyre, Leon. "Trois mises au tombeau ignorées en Aquitaine: Saint-Céré, Sauvagnas, Pujols." Revue archéologique 1 (January-June 1962). p. 75.
Hoving, Thomas. "The Thread of Patronage: The Medieval Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters." Apollo 82, no. 43 (September 1965). p. 189, fig. 15.
Anne, Françoise. "Le château de Biron." L'Information d'Histoire de l'Art 12, no. 5 (1967). pp. 225–26.
Forsyth, William H. The Entombment of Christ: French Sculptures of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. pp. 114–7, 120, 121, fig. 162, 171.
Anne, Françoise. Le château de Biron. Paris: Nouvelles Editions Patines, 1971. p. 22.
Bou, Gilbert. La sculpture gothique en Rouergue. Rodez: Imprimerie P. Carrère, 1971. p. 127.
Bou, Gilbert. Sculpture gothique albigeoise. Rodez: Imprimerie P. Carrère, 1972. p. 182.
Cloulas-Brousseau, Annie. "Review of Gilbert Bou, La sculpture en Rouergue à la fin du gothique and Sculpture gothique albigeoise." Bulletin Monumental 130, no. 4 (1972). p. 372.
Forsyth, William H. "The Biron Master and His Workshop." Metropolitan Museum Journal 8 (1973). pp. 105–163, fig. 3–7, 14.
Cloulas-Brousseau, Annie. "Le 'Maître de Biron' et la sculpture française de la fin du Moyen Âge." Bulletin Monumental 133, no. 3 (1975). pp. 262–63.
Roudié, Paul. "Le Maître de Biron et les bustes de Montal." Bulletin Monumental 139, no. 4 (1981). pp. 236–37, fig. 9.
de Bévotte, Marguerite. La "Nostre Dame de Grasse" du Musée des Augustins de Toulouse et le rayonnement de son art dans les régions voisines à la fin de l'ère gothique. Rodez: Imprimerie P. Carrère, 1982. pp. 97–100, pl. LV.
Tétart-Vittu, Françoise. "Le château de Biron." Congrès Archéologique de France 137 (1982). p. 225, fig. 7.
Cloulas-Brousseau, Annie. "Review of Marguerite de Bévotte, La 'Nostre Dame de Grasse' du Musée des Augustins de Toulouse et le rayonnement de son art dans les régions voisines à la fin de l'ère gothique." Bulletin Monumental 141, no. 2 (1983). p. 223.
Bayle, Jeanne. "La mise au tombeau de Foix, oeuvre d'Auguste Virebant." Bulletin de la Société Ariégeoise des Sciences, Lettres et Arts 46 (1991). p. 110.
Forsyth, William Holmes. The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture: Regional Variations. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. pp. 137, 140, 178, 205 n. 4, fig. 189–90, Listed under The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 2.
Julien, Pascal. "De l'imagier Jean Bauduy au Maître de Biron: Les 'momies des comtes de Toulouse', statues en terre cuite de 1523." Bulletin Monumental 158, no. 4 (2000). pp. 337, 338.
Strouse, Jean. "J. Pierpont Morgan, Financier and Collector." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 57, no. 3 (Winter 2000). p. 38, fig. 43.
Karsallah, Elsa. "Mises au tombeau du Christ realisées pour les dignitaires religeux: Particularités et fonctions." In L'artiste et le clerc: Commandes artistiques des grands ecclesiastiques à la fin du Moyen Âge (XIVe-XVIe siècles), edited by Fabienne Joubert. Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2006.
Wixom, William D. "Late Medieval Sculpture in the Metropolitan: 1400 to 1530." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 64, no. 4 (Spring 2007). p. 40, fig. 16.
Gennari-Santori, Flaminia. "Medieval Art for America: The Arrival of the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Journal of the History of Collections 22, no. 1 (2010). pp. 86, 94.
Riou, Charlotte, ed. Une histoire toulousaine vers 1500: Les sculptures de l'église des Récollets. Toulouse: Musée des Augustins, 2011. p. 59, fig. 18.
Brennan, Christine. "Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture at The Met: Three Morgan Acquisitions and the Evolution of their Display." In Morgan: The Collector: Essays in Honor of Linda Roth's 40th Anniversary at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, edited by Vanessa Sigalas, and Jennifer Tonkovich. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2023. fig. 4, 12, 14, 16, 18 pp. 79–81, 86, 89, 90, 92.
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