Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Blake created the print Pity around 1795 as part of a series known as Large Colour Prints. The work emerged during a period when Shakespeare's play Macbeth was experiencing a major revival in popularity with nine performances recorded that same year.
The visual composition captures a female cherub leaning down to snatch a baby from its mother while air swirls around them. Alexander Gilchrist observed that the print shows a woman bending down to succour a man stretched out at length as if given over to death.
Blake produced these works using an unusual method involving paint applied directly onto gessoed millboard matrices. He could obtain up to three impressions from a single painting by pressing paper against the wet paint on the board and each resulting impression required hand-finishing with ink and watercolour to complete the image.
Four versions of the print survive today held across major institutions including Tate Gallery London and British Museum. The most elaborate version resides at Tate Gallery where it was presented by W. Graham Robertson in 1939 under catalog number Butlin 310 and another impression sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection donated by Mrs. Robert W. Goelet in 1958.
The artist drew direct inspiration from lines in Act One Scene Seven where pity is compared to a naked new-born babe striding through the blast. Both prints reference Shakespeare's Macbeth yet approach its themes from different mythological angles while Nicholas Rawlinson noted how the play was undergoing major revival when Blake worked on these images.