The Saint Peter’s Pieta is surely the most universally loved work of Michelangelo. With good reason, we admire the miraculous transformation of a giant piece of marble into a larger than life-size two-figure sculpture group. But more than a work of art, the Pieta is a moving and deeply affecting portrayal of the Virgin and Christ, of a mother mourning the loss of her son.

Michelangelo’s biographers tell a delightful tale of how the artist signed his masterpiece on the diagonal sash across the Virgin’s chest. The artist supposedly overheard two persons who, admiring the sculpture but uncertain of its author, attributed it to a certain Gobbo of Milan. Incensed, Michelangelo returned later that night and prominently carved (in translation): “Michelangelo Buonarroti Florentine made this.”

A closer inspection of how the band articulates the body underneath and affects the surrounding drapery forces us to recognize that the signature was not an afterthought but was conceived as an integral part of the sculpture from the beginning. It is likely that Michelangelo always intended to sign of decorate the sash in some manner.

The story, nonetheless, is one that universally delights in the retelling, and however fictional, it also captures an important truth about this unique work: this was Michelangelo’s boldest quest for fame and his graduation piece to public acclaim.

Never again would Michelangelo sign a work.

The image of the Virgin Mary holding the lifeless body of Christ, known as the Pietà, stems from a popular Northern Renaissance composition. Commissioned by a French cardinal in 1498, the Pietà ushered in Michelangelo’s fame as a sculptor. The contract for the work even stipulates that

That sentence alone attests to the importance placed on the commission. One of the original copies of the contract for the Pietà is on display in this gallery.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarotti Simoni (Florence 1475 – 1564 Rome)

Signed in the cast: MICHAEL.ĀGELVS. BONAROTVS.FLORENT.FACIEBA[T].

On 8 February 1546, the French monarch François I wrote to Michelangelo in Rome:

Sr Michelangelo, because I would like very much to have some works made

by you, I have instructed the Abbé of Saint Martin de Troyes [i.e. the artist

Primaticcio], who is the bearer of this present letter, to go abroad to collect

them.   If, on his arrival, you have some fine pieces you wish to give him, I

have commanded him to pay you well for them.   And furthermore, for my sake,

I hope that you will permit him to take casts from the Christ of the Minerva and

from Our Lady della Febbre [the Pietà]  so that I may adorn one of my chapels

with them, as they are works which I am assured are the most exquisite and

excellent in your art.

When Michelangelo completed the Pietà in 1499, he was 24 years old and the premier sculptor in Italy.   Thereafter he became the first in the world.  Though he lived to be  almost 90, and carved sculptures of inimitable force and compassion, Michelangelo never again achieved the sublime expression of the Pietà.   The King’s appeal for a cast is proof that he lived to see it become an icon.

The Pietà was a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture. – Vasari.

The Pieta, Michelangelo’s most sacred work, was commissioned by Cardinal Jean de Villiers de la Grolaye, an aged Benedictine, who sought a monument for his tomb.   The contract of 27 August 1498 was signed by the cardinal and by Jacopo Galli, a Roman banker for whom Michelangelo had carved the classical Bacchus that is today in the Bargello museum in Florence.   His sponsor’s confidence was unbounded:  “I, Jacopo Galli, do promise the Reverend Monsignor that Michelangelo will complete the said work within one year, and that it shall be the most beautiful work in marble to be seen in Rome today, and such that no master of our times shall be able to produce a better.”

Michelangelo fulfilled these remarkable conditions except in one respect: the Pieta took him two years, not one.   Cardinal de la Grolaye never saw the completed sculpture, but the statue was duly installed over his tomb in the chapel of St Petronilla, a circular Roman mausoleum adjacent to the south transept of St Peter’s in Rome.  By 1517, as St Peter’s was reconstructed and enlarged, the statue was transferred to the interior of the new basilica.   It was first placed in the chapel of Santa Maria della Febbre, where it was seen by Vasari and Condivi.  After a series of other transfers, the Pietà was moved in 1749 to the first chapel to the right of the entrance.   According to Redig de Campos, director of the Vatican museums, the Pietà was originally installed at a height of 120 centimeters above the ground.

The scene of the Pietà, in which Christ’s body is placed across his mourning mother’s knees, is not mentioned in the Bible, but during the Middle Ages as cited as one of the ‘Seven Sorrows of the Virgin’.    The subject became widely known in northern European wooden sculpture which emphasized its tragic depths.   During the Renaissance, Botticelli and other Florentine painters  represented the Pietà, but Michelangelo was the first Italian sculptor in his century to attempt it.

Vasari, Michelangelo’s admirer and friend, was convinced of its perfection:

Among the many beautiful features (including the inspired draperies) this is notably demonstrated by the body of Christ.   It would be impossible to find a body showing greater mastery of art and possessing more beautiful members…  The lovely expression of the head, the harmony in the joints and attachments of the arms, legs, and trunk, and the fine tracery of pulses and veins are all so wonderful that it staggers belief that the hand of an artist could have executed this inspired and admirable work so perfectly and in so short a time.

All observers agree on the harmony of Michelangelo’ s group which combines the two figures within the outline of a pyramid.  “Christ’s head is turned back in such a way as not to break the bounding line, and beneath his body the folds of the Virgin’s cloak flood down like a waterfall” (Pope-Hennessy).   The question was raised at the time that Mary might be considered too young in relation to her son.   Michelangelo replied, through Condivi, that the Virgin’s  youthfulness was the outward manifestation of her chaste heart.

The serenity of this interpretation is a similarly original departure from the prior tradition.   Our deepest feelings are touched by the sight of Christ, as if in death he has again become a child gathered up in his mother’s arms.   Her expression is mild and contemplative.   The Savior’s torso and limbs are smooth and hardly show the marks of his sufferings.   So Michelangelo had  portrayed him in a Crucifix for the Augustinians of Santo Spirito church in Florence.   Michelangelo was deeply versed in the Renaissance philosophy, based on St Augustine, that held that

God is beautiful, beautiful in heaven and on earth…  beautiful in the arms of his parents… beautiful in leaving this life and in retaking it; beautiful on the Cross, in the tomb, and in heaven.   Listen to the psalms and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendour of his beauty.

– Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms.

It was Michelangelo’s genius to embody in a sculpture his personal longing for the purity and divinity of God.   The subject of the Pietà invites our reflection on mortality: late in his life the sculptor would return several times to this theme.   In this first, youthful Pietà, however, where others had seen only tragedy, Michelangelo found immortality.

The Pietà was always the most admired of his sacred conceptions. Its fame was widely spread during Michelangelo’s lifetime by requests for copies in marble and plaster.

THE PIETA

At the age of twenty-three, Michelangelo was commissioned by a French cardinal to create the Pieta for St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican as a tomb monument. He traveled to the marble quarries at Cararra in central Italy to select the block from which to make this large work. The choice of the stone was important because he envisioned the statue as already existing within the marble, needing only to be “set free” from it. It was sculpted from 1498-1500 and established Michelangelo instantly as the greatest sculptor of his time. The word Pieta means pity from the Greek word for “compassion” or “pity” and refers not, as often presumed to this specific work (Michelangelo actually did two other Pietas later in life, both of them unfinished) but to a traditional type of devotional image. The theme of Mary cradling the dead body of Christ in her lap was all but unknown in Italy before Michelangelo made it famous in this statue, but it was a staple in the repertoire of French and German sculptors and painters. Michelangelo, however, rendered the northern theme in a way never before attempted or accomplished.

Georgio Vasari, The great art historian wrote:

“It would be impossible for any craftsman or sculptor, no matter how brilliant, ever to surpass the grace

or design of this work, or try to cut and polish the marble with the skill that Michelangelo displayed. It

is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have reduced to perfection that nature is

scarcely able to create in the flesh. Michelangelo put in to this work so much love and effort (something

that he never did again), that he left his name written across the sash over Our Lady’s breast.”

Selected Reference Literature:

Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori… 1550 and 1568; Condivi,

Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti…1553; Ludwig Goldscheider, Michelangelo: Complete

Edition, 1962;  D. Redig de Campos, “Un nuovo aspetto della Pietà di Michelangelo in S.

Pietro”, in Capitolium, 1963, 188-191; Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, Florence, 1979, IV,

229;  J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculture, 1985.