[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1705484014130{padding-top: 300px !important;padding-bottom: 300px !important;background-image: url(https:\/\/www.galleriabazzanti.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/blog-michelangelo-pieta\u0300-00-sfondo.jpg?id=15755) !important;}”][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row”][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Michelangelo and the Vatican Piet\u00e0” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” el_class=”titolo-articolo”][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n
Vasari, regarding the Piet\u00e0, writes in his “Vite”: [\u2026To which work no sculptor or craftsman should ever think of the rare ability to achieve in design or grace, nor with effort ever be able to finish, clean and pierce the marble with as much art as Michelagnolo did, because in it one can see all the value and the power of art. Among the beautiful things [that] are there, beyond his divine clothes, the dead Christ is seen: and let no one think of the beauty of the limbs and the artifice of the body to see a naked man so well refined with muscles, veins and nerves above the skeleton of that body, nor yet a dead man more similar to the dead than that. Here there is a very sweet air of the head, and a concordance in the joints and joints of the arms and in those of the body and legs, the wrists and the veins worked, that in truth one marvels in amazement that the hand of an artisan could have been able to so divinely and properly to do something so wonderful in a very short time: that it is certainly a miracle that a stone, from the beginning without any form, has ever been reduced to that perfection that nature usually works hard to form in the flesh…]<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”The Piet\u00e0<\/b>” font_container=”tag:h2|font_size:18|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” el_class=”titolo-articolo”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n At the age of 24, in 1499, Michelangelo executed his masterpiece, the VATICAN PIETA<\/strong><\/a>. The banker Jacopo Galli had become a great admirer and close friend of him, so much so that he had hosted him in his palace in Rome. He had also become his guarantor and intermediary, and it was thanks to Galli that in 1496 Michelangelo had the commission of the Piet\u00e0 for Jean de Bilh\u00e8res, abbot of San Dionigi, ambassador to Rome of Charles VIII of France to Pope Alexander VI.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15766″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706174470229{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Charles VIII of France, French School, Palace of Versailles<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n Having received a deposit of 150 ducats out of the agreed upon 450 ducats in 1497, he went on horseback to the Carrara marble quarries to find the right marble. Having returned to Rome, on 27 August 1497 he signed the official contract in the presence of Galli, with the commitment to complete the work in one year, a contract which stated:<\/p>\n Et io Jacopo Galli prometto al reverendissimo Monsignore che lo dicto Michelangelo far\u00e0 la dicta opera in fra un anno e sar\u00e0 la pi\u00f9 bella opera di marmo che sia oge in Roma, e che maestro niuno la far\u00eca megliore oge.<\/em> [And I, Jacopo Galli, promise the most reverend Monsignor that the said Michelangelo will do the said work in a year’s time and it will be the most beautiful marble work of any time in Rome, and that no master will do it better than any other.<\/em> He kept his commitment by delivering the masterpiece in 1499, which was taken to Santa Petronilla where the ambassador wanted to be buried.<\/p>\n In 1517 the Piet\u00e0 was moved to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, where it changed places several times, until in 1749 it was placed in the first chapel on the right of the nave of the basilica where it still resides today.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15778″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706287856633{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Michelangelo, Vatican Piet\u00e0, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n The beautiful face of the Madonna portrayed as a young woman (Virgin Mother, Daughter of your Son, Dante, first verse of canto XXIII of Paradise) at the age in which she conceived him, maintains a composed pose in pain as she looks at the body of her Son. \u2026A sedere sul sasso, dove fu fitta la Croce, col figliuol morto in grembo, di tanta e cos\u00ec rara bellezza, che nessun la vede che dentro a piet\u00e0 non si commuova\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n [\u2026Sitting on the stone, where the Cross was placed, with her dead son in her lap, of such and such rare beauty, that no one sees it who is not moved by pity\u2026<\/em>]<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15783″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706520398092{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Michelangelo, Vatican Piet\u00e0, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15786″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706520410205{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Michelangelo, Vatican Piet\u00e0, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15789″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706520422884{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Michelangelo, Vatican Piet\u00e0, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, details<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n The perfection of the anatomies reproduced in an exceptional way favors the beauty that the work emanates together with the tenderness and torment for the death of Christ. Michelangelo wrote his name on this single work, that is, he signed it in Roman characters on the band that crosses the Madonna’s chest: MICHAEL AGELVS BONAROTUS FLOREN FACIEBAT.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15795″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706520536366{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Michelangelo, Vatican Piet\u00e0, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, detail<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n The Piet\u00e0 has suffered various damages over time and has therefore also undergone various repairs and restorations. The last one was in 1972 when a madman shouting “I am Jesus Christ” took a hammer to the work, damaging it in various parts.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_images_carousel images=”15800″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706520597670{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n White Carrara marble hand-sculpted in the Bazzanti Studio, posthumous original from a cast made on the original by the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_images_carousel images=”15803″ img_size=”post-slide” hide_pagination_control=”yes” hide_prev_next_buttons=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1706520679696{margin-top: -30px !important;}”]<\/p>\n Posthumous statuary bronze casting from a cast made on the original by the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence<\/a><\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n
\n\u2026Alla quale opera non pensi mai scultore n\u00e9 artefice raro potere aggiugnere di disegno n\u00e9 di grazia, n\u00e9 con fatica poter mai di finitezza, pulitezza e di straforare il marmo tanto con arte quanto Michelagnolo vi fece, perch\u00e9 si scorge in quella tutto il valore et il potere dell\u2019arte. Fra le cose belle [che] vi sono, oltra i panni divini suoi, si scorge il morto Cristo: e non si pensi alcuno di bellezza di membra e d\u2019artificio di corpo vedere uno ignudo tanto ben ricerco di muscoli, vene, nerbi sopra l\u2019ossatura di quel corpo, n\u00e9 ancora un morto pi\u00f9 simile al morto di quello. Quivi \u00e8 dolcissima aria di testa, et una concordanza nelle appiccature e congiunture delle braccia e in quelle del corpo e delle gambe, i polsi e le vene lavorate, che in vero si maraviglia lo stupore che mano d\u2019artefice abbia potuto s\u00ec divinamente e propriamente fare in pochissimo tempo cosa s\u00ec mirabile: che certo \u00e8 un miracolo che un sasso, da principio senza forma nessuna, si sia mai ridotto a quella perfezzione che la natura affatica suol formar nella carne\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nNel contratto di allogazione era stato specificato che sarebbe stata Una Piet\u00e0 di marmo<\/em>, cio\u00e8 una Vergine Maria vestita con un Cristo morto nudo in braccio.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIn the contract it was specified that it would be a marble Piet\u00e0, that is, a dressed Virgin Mary with a naked dead Christ in her arms.]<\/em><\/p>\n
\nChrist is completely released on the knees of the Mother who does not directly touch the sacred body of her son, an edge of the shroud is placed between her right hand and his body. The Madonna’s left hand has a gesture of desperate question.
\nThe rock on which she sits is Mount Golgotha, as the biographer Condivi says in the \u201cLife of Michelagnolo Buonarroti\u201d published in Rome in 1553:<\/p>\n
\nEven the folds of the dress and the shroud are reproduced in a masterly manner, almost like fabric transformed into marble, or marble transformed into fabric.
\nUnlike most of his other works, in this one Michelangelo wanted to smooth and polish the surfaces, making the skin translucent like alabaster.<\/p>\n