he word comes from the Latin word "absolute loyalty.. a deep love that neither life nor death can destroy". opular piety very quickly became attached to meditating on the awful things that happened between the death and resurrection of Christ. Between taking Him down from the Cross and placing Him in the Tomb, two scenes have appeared that are not found in the Gospels but which make a strong dramatic impression on the minds of the faithful and have a major place in the history of art - the Lamentations and the Pieta.
oth concentrate their gaze on Christ and his Mother. In the Lamentations, the Mother looks at her Son with his body stretched out along the Cross. In the Pieta, she holds him once again on her knees. hile in the first scene they are turned towards a gathering of people that reduce and reflect the pain of Mary - the holy women, John, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus. In the second, they are almost completely alone, alone to the world, as the crowd at Golgotha suddenly left. n this moment of solitude, so full of emotion, artists have wanted, from the beginning, to express one of the greatest spiritual lessons of the Christian Mystery - whereas the battered and broken body of the crucified one recalled the intensity of the sacrifice, the suffering and often the almost serene face of the Blessed Virgin was already contemplating through suffering the salvation brought to the world.