Mother Mourning her Son I

​From Michelangelo’s Piéta to Käthe Kollwitz’s  mother mourning her dead son,  this theme expresses timeless, universal and boundless grief. Herman Wald depicts the matriarch as an upright, classical  figure.  Clad  in a long robe she  moves forward fatefully,  holding  the dead body of her son in her arms. His  limp  body is hanging down, supported by the breasts  which once had   fed  him.   Her face is a mask of grim and stoic grief. She has become  a guardian of fate, a  receptor of human sacrifice. There is a ritualistic quality in the spiritually redemptive portrayal persona of the mother.