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MICHELANGELO - PIETA
Public
domain, via
Wikimedia Commons.
Pietà, St Peter's Basilica (1498–1499)
Michelangelo |
- In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas, commissioned
Michelangelo to carve a Pietà, a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus.
- The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative
of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of
medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to
the Cardinal
- The contract was agreed upon in August of
the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its
completion.
- It was soon to be regarded as one of the
world's great masterpieces of sculpture, 'a revelation of all
the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture.'
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Except this was not the intent of the sculpture because
Michelangelo carved to depict Virgin Mary suffering because of
her son Jesus Christ/Lucifer who ruined her life.
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It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.
(Vasari)
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