Andy Warhol, the most influential artist of the Pop Art movement, frequently explored the endless reproduction of images in the media, combining hand-painted backgrounds with photo-silkscreen prints to render celebrity
figures and historic events in highly flattened and boldly graphic compositions.

Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Warhol began to collect the newspaper photographs of the widowed First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy (1929–1994) that constantly appeared in the popular press. This image of her at her husband’s funeral was appropriated from a photograph published in Life magazine. Warhol, a devout Catholic, emphasized the enigmatic qualities of this enduring image, creating a reinterpretation that transforms the mourning widow into an iconic modern Madonna—familiar and distant, temporal and timeless.