A dominant presence in Venice and Padua as well as his native Genoa during the 1680s and 1690s, Filippo Parodi was a versatile artist who carved both marble and wood. Among his Paduan commissions was the altar of the Pietà in the abbey of Santa Giustina, showing Mary cradling the body of her dead son Jesus. The arrangement of the central figures of the final realized marble Pietà was determined in this terracotta version, which is unusually large and finished, indicating that it was conceived as a presentation model for the approval of patrons rather than a sketchier preparatory study.