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Provenance: According to Caroli, Private Collection, Venice, along with a pendant, The Deposition, currently in a Private collection, Mantua (see Caroli, op. cit., p. 203, nos. 308-309)
With Italico and Alessandro Brass, Venice, 1924-1950;
From whom purchased by Severance A. Millikin, Cleveland;
By whom given to The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1955 [acc. no. 1955.682].

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Exhibited: Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Venetian Tradition, 1956, no. 4.

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Literature: O. Benesch, "Maulbertsche zu den Quellen Seines Malerischen Stils," in Städel-Jahrbuch, 1924, vol. 3-4, pp. 139-141, reproduced pl. 113;
N. Ivanoff, "Tre Pietà di Giuseppe Bazzani," in Emporium, vol. CIX, April 1949, p. 162-166, reproduced fig. 3;
H. S. Francis, "A Pietà by Giuseppe Bazzani: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Severance Milliken," in Cleveland Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. XLIII, March 1956, pp. 44-46, reproduced p. 42;
Art Quarterly, Autumn 1956, vol. XIX, p. 305, no. 4;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Handbook, 1958, p. 147, reproduced fig. 427;
N. Ivanoff, "Band I," in Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, Zurich 1964, p. 251, reproduced;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Handbook, 1966, p. 147, reproduced;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Handbook, 1969, p. 147, reproduced;
B. Fredrickson & F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge 1972, pp. 21, 296, 574;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Handbook, 1978, p. 148, reproduced;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of Paintings: Part Three. European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, Cleveland 1982, pp. 308-309, no. 137, reproduced;
F. Caroli, Giuseppe Bazzani: L'Opera completa, Milan 1988, p. 203, no. 308, reproduced;
A. Chong, European & American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue, Cleveland 1993, p. 8, reproduced.

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Notes: Like virtually all of Bazzani's nocturnal scenes, the present canvas has been dated to the last period of his career, sometime after 1750. Although the inscription on the stretcher claims that this work was a study for Bazzani's larger and more articulated Pietà with Mary Magdalene and Saint John the Evangelist in Mantua's Duomo, the present painting is actually much later in date and its rough, dark and almost unfinished appearance is meant to convey a sense of religious fervor and humility.