Called Pietà when it's actually the moment when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus lay Christ's body on the Virgin's lap.

Fouquet's largest painting (168 × 259 cm), yet little known to the general public, this is a work that deserves to be seen.

You don't discover it by chance during a visit to a major museum in Antwerp or Berlin. To see it, you have to travel the small country roads and religiously visit it in the church of Noauns-les-Fontaines, a small village of less than 800 souls on the edge of Touraine!
As always in Fouquet's work, the painting is distinguished by its exceptional geometry and purity for a 15th-century painter.

We are struck by the calm, silence and total absence of violence that emanates from the painting. Everything in this scene is extremely gentle. Not a drop of blood escapes from Christ's wounds, and his face shows no signs of suffering. The Virgin's pain is equally subdued. Only her knotted hands and tear-reddened eyes suggest her grief.

The work invites the viewer to a long, silent meditation and acceptance of death.