Title:Toward the Light – Pietà Reimagined

Year: 2006 Medium: Pastel on paper Artist: Martine Jacobs Theme: Spiritual comfort, symbolic mourning, ascent to heaven

Description:

In this 2006 pastel, Martine Jacobs channels the timeless sorrow of Michelangelo’s Pietà into a contemporary spiritual vision. The figures, softly abstracted, embody the universal gesture of mourning and grace — a tender embrace between suffering and transcendence.

Set against a warm, ethereal backdrop, the composition suggests not only loss but elevation. The blurred edges and radiant tones guide the eye upward, hinting at a passage beyond grief. The Pietà becomes not a final moment, but a threshold — pointing toward the light, toward heaven.

Jacobs’ pastel is a visual prayer: a gesture of solace for the broken, and a reminder that even in sorrow, there is a way forward — luminous, quiet, and eternal.