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At over one metre in height, this is one of the largest of only some twenty monumental English pietas to have survived, although by the Reformation there would probably have been a pieta in most English churches. It may well have been a comparable image that moved Margery Kempe to tears in a Norwich church, as she records in her 'Book' (ch.60). This early 15th-century pieta resembles that at Breadsall church (Derbyshire), in turn related to the three statues from Flawford (now Castle Museum, Nottingham). The large seated Virgin cradles in her right hand the disproportionately small figure of her son, whose body is turned outwards, as if displaying his wounds to the onlooker and hence offering the promise of redemption. Although the Virgin is enthroned on a hillock scattered with the bones and skulls of Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion, Christ is now past his Passion agony. Nor does Mary regard her son with lamentation but looks out pensively, a figure of contemplation and the mother who both mourns her son yet serenely looks forward to his resurrection. With her left hand Mary touches her veil, a gesture frequent in English depictions and which alludes to the Virgin's participation in both the Incarnation and Redemption. For it was believed that Mary wrapped her child in her veil at the Nativity and later covered his nakedness with her veil at the Crucifixion, as described in the 'Meditationes Vitae Christ', and in the 15th-century English version by Nicholas Love, 'The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesu'. Traces of blue colour survive on Mary's mantle. Prayers before such an image would carry an indulgence, and the evidence of wills shows that burial close to images of Our Lady of Pity was sought after. Lollards, however, pointed to the lack of biblical basis for the moment depicted in the pieta, and a man at South Creake (Norfolk) refused to recite prayers by way of penance before a pieta (N.Tanner (ed),'Norwich Heresy Trials:1428-31' (1977), p.90).

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