Florence (AFP).- piety by Michelangelo, the beautiful marble sculpture that symbolizes maternal love, admired by the whole world in the basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, it has mistakenly overshadowed two other moving versions on the same theme sculpted by the genius of the Renaissance.
For this reason, the museum of the Florence Duomo, the cathedral, owner of the so-called Florentine Pietà or Bandini, which has just been restored, has decided to exhibit the three works together for the first time, thanks to loans made by the Vatican Museums and the museum of the Sforzesco Castle in Milan, where the so-called Rondanini Pietà is located.
Installed one in front of the other, in an elegant gray-tinted room, these variations or tracings on the same theme (Mary embracing her deceased son), were made at different stages of the artist’s life, who died at the age of 88 (1475 -1564).
For the director of the Florentine museum, Timothy Verdon, it is a unique opportunity to capture the intellectual and spiritual evolution of such an important artist “who was at the service of the popes for most of his career,” he said.
The Vatican Pietà, made between 1498 and 1499, when he was less than 25 years old, amazed his contemporariesdazzled by the humble beauty of that crying Virgin, whose body is wrapped in a skilful set of canvases.
Michelangelo, criticized then for portraying such a young Mary, justified himself by explaining that virginity and purity kept women young and beautiful.
On her knees rests her son, who died at the age of 33, whose serene face already announces the Resurrection.
This universal symbol of beauty and love received fifteen hammer blows on May 21, 1972 by an unbalanced, that broke the nose and part of an arm of the Virgin. Since then, the restored work has been protected behind armored glass.
The anguish of a genius
By a strange twist of fate, Michelangelo himself, known for his irascible character, and dissatisfied with the second version of the “Pietà” made in 1547, attacked it with a hammer some years later, and the marks are still seen today in day on the shoulder of Jesus and the hand of Mary.
When embarking on the second version, which would never end, the artist, then 72 years old and suffering from depression, felt that death was approaching after having lived through the ups and downs of history, in particular the sack of Rome in 1527.
The exhibition of these three works “allows us to take stock of Michelangelo’s style, of its evolution during the fifty years that separate the first Pietà from the other two and the drastic and surprising transformation between the last two”, explained Timothy Verdon.
The third “Pietà”, called Rondanini, is undoubtedly the most surprising for a less informed public: dazzling in its modernity, the sculpture, about two meters high, begun around 1552, was found in the artist’s Roman residence after his death.
Its unfinished character gives the work a fragile, imperfect touch, communicating human anguish of someone who is one step away from death, who feared divine judgment and had taken a vow of poverty.
Under the motto “You don’t think how much blood costs”, from Dante Alighieri’s Paradise, which Michelangelo wrote shortly before his death on a drawing of the Pietà, the exhibition opens on Thursday, open until August 1 and organized on the occasion of the event “Mediterranean border of peace 2022″, which will bring together bishops and mayors of the Mediterranean in Florence and in which Pope Francis will participate next Sunday.
Source: Eluniverso
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