The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of June 10, 2026
Pieta #1
1984
Location: Not on view
Did You Know?
In the photograph to which this drawing relates, Miguel Ferrando appears in drag, probably a reference to his occasional performances at New York’s Pyramid Club.Description
Darrel Ellis worked between photography and drawing to investigate the relationship between memory and representation. Much of his work related to his father, who lost his life to police violence shortly before the artist’s birth. As a young man Ellis discovered an archive of his father’s family photographs and made these images the subject of an extensive body of work. This drawing is the result of Ellis’s own photographs and is based on images that he staged based on iconography of the pietà, or Mary mourning over Christ’s body. Ellis posed his close friend artist Miguel Ferrando, and Ferrando’s younger brother Todd, and drew the image alongside another photo of an anonymous crowd. In its hybrid composition, the drawing commemorates the friendship and collaboration between Ellis and Ferrando, who both had a lasting interest in art history following time spent sketching in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.- {{cite web|title=Pieta #1|url=false|author=Darrel Ellis|year=1984|access-date=10 June 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2025.262