Good Friday – The Lamentation of the Dead Christ – Precursor to the Pieta

A Different Good Friday Image

The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ

The image in this Good Friday message is a detail of a twelfth century fresco in the Church of St. Panteleimon, in Nerezi Skopje (Kosovo) photographed during our Sacred Art Tour in Fall 2023.  This is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.  The depth of human emotion is palpable.

This icon allows us to feel the closeness of Mary to Jesus and is a bookend of the life of Mary and Christ. At the beginning, was the image of the Mother Mary cheek to cheek with the infant Jesus.  At the end, we see them cheek to cheek in death. The Mother of God is inseparable from her Son. As she cradles her dead son, Mary’s grief lined facial expression conveys the depth of emotional pain. The intensity of her gaze is a combination of grief and courage, intense shock and tender love. Their joint perseverance reminds us that God does not abandon us and is always with us, even in our times of unimaginable pain.

Below we see the beloved disciple St. John tenderly holding Christ’s hand.  This larger view also reveals that Christ has been laid in His mother’s lap, a precursor to the Western “Pieta”.

This style of imagery appeared in sacred art around the eleventh century when artists became interested in depicting relatable, realistic emotional representation to evoke a response in the viewer. By the 11^th century, Byzantine artists were exploring psychologically impactful and different ways of expressing the power of the Crucifixion in art. Seeing Christ’s naked body, bent and suffering, and the lamentation of His mother was a powerful way to evoke grief and empathy, helping us to take our own grief and troubles to our Lord and His mother.

Scholars have noted the striking similarities between Nerezi and Giotto’s fourteenth-century frescoes at the Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy, particularly in Giotto’s own rendition of this same scene: The Lamentation. Although Giotto’s figures are more naturalistic than those at Nerezi, both frescoes emphasize the mourners’ grief within a landscape that amplifies the drama of the scene.