Analysis of the
‘Vatican Pieta’ by
Michelangelo.
Syeda Inshrah Uzair
Group A
Michelangelo, Pietá (1498-99), Rome, St Peters Basilica.
In 1947 Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, a French cardinal commissioned Michelangelo di
Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, twenty-three at that time, to create "the most beautiful work of
marble in Rome, one that no living artist could do better."1 The sculpture was to be placed in
the cardinal’s funeral monument, the chapel of Santa Petronilla in the Vatican. It was also
meant to help with the political reconciliation between France and Rome after the Italian War
in 1494, as the Italian-made marble sculpture was commissioned by a French cardinal to be
1
Zaid S Sethi, "Michelangelo Artist Overview and Analysis", The Art Story, 2018,
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/michelangelo/.
placed in a French setting, inside an Italian basilica. This is what turned the Pietà sculpture
into a symbolic reminder of the French presence in Rome.
The sculpture measures 68.5 in × 76.8 in and is made from a single slab of Carrara marble, a
blue and white stone named after the Italian region where it was mined. The statue depicts
one of the key events from the life of the Virgin, Seven Sorrows of Mary, which was the
subject of Catholic devotional prayers. It is thought to be right after Jesus was taken off the
cross and before he was placed in the tomb when Mary held the emaciated body of Christ and
mourned her and the world’s loss. Mary's head is located at the apex of the pyramidal
construction. The pyramidal composition was commonly employed by Renaissance artists
and sculptors to draw the viewer's eye to a figure or to convey a sense of stability. The statue
gradually widens from the top of Mary's robe to the base, which represents Golgotha's rock.
It’s immediately noticeable that Mary’s figure is disproportionately large as compared to
Christ's body since it is impossible to represent a fully-grown man being held in a woman's
lap at full length. Mary's substantial clothing hides a large portion of her body, and the
figures' interactions seem very genuine. However, if the statue was standing then Mary would
tower over Christ's standing body. Nevertheless, by making Mary's face and hands the only
visible body parts, proportionate to those of Jesus, Michelangelo prevents the scene from
looking unnatural.
Similarly, it is thought that to overcome the physical difficulties presented by a woman
having to cradle the body of a full-grown man, Michelangelo purposefully made his Pieta
disproportionate in size. In Renaissance painting, the use of disproportionate scale was quite
widespread and had no negative effects on the composition as a whole. In doing so, not only
did he get his vision across, but also showed his unmatched expertise in sculpting. The deep
and intricate folds of Mary’s garments show just how skilled Michelangelo was with a mallet
and a chisel to be able to cut so deep into the marble without producing cracks in its surface.
Not only does the drapery masterfully draws the viewer’s attention away from Mary’s sizing
but it also points toward the holiness of Christ as there is no direct contact between Mary and
Jesus. Even while holding up Jesus' body, the Virgin's right-hand does not directly touch his
flesh. The material from her cloak covers it, denoting the holiness of Christ's body.
To balance out the fullness of the drapery Michelangelo sculpted Mary’s left hand to be
turned upwards and open. Due to this quiet, understated gesture, which represents the
resurrection of Christ or, more broadly, the progression of hope or, possibly, the act of letting
go the rest of the composition is balanced.2
While, Michelangelo wasn’t the first person to visually recreate the Pieta, his interpretation of
the religious event was unlike that of his predecessors. He sculpted Mary to look much
younger than her 50 years as mentioned in the Seven Sorrows of Mary. She looks to be Jesus
Christ’s age when he was crucified, thirty-three, or younger. When his depiction of Mary was
criticized, he defended his work by telling his biographer and fellow sculptor Ascanio
Condivi his reasons behind his decision to make Mary appear young. "Do you not know that
chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste?" he argued. "How much
more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that
might change her body?"3 In addition to the youth and freshness of her being retained in such
a natural way, let me add that, it may be thought that supernatural power contributed to
demonstrating to the world the mother's virginity and ongoing purity. To demonstrate that, as
He did, the Son of God took on a truly human body and was subjected to everything that an
ordinary man experiences, save for sin, it was not necessary for the divine to restrain the
human, but rather to leave it to its order and course, ensuring that the period He displayed
was exactly what it was. “This means that you shouldn't be wondering why I made the Most
Holy Virgin, the mother of God, much younger than her age would normally necessitate, and
that I left the Son at His own age” (Michelangelo).4 In my opinion, the remark is purposely
deceptive even if it is true because so few if any, truly great artists have ever disclosed their
true intentions. Like Picasso, they frequently deceive friends, family, and even their
generation.
However, at the same time it could be argued that Michelangelo's young Madonna was
influenced by his love for Dante's Divine Comedy, he knew the work so well that when he
went to Bologna, he paid for his accommodation by reciting verses from it. In one part of the
Saint Bernard poem, a prayer for the Virgin Mary says “Virgin Mother, Daughter of your
Son” because in Christian doctrine the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are considered to
2
Debra Brehmer, The Pieta: A Story in Five Parts, Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Arts,
https://www.portraitsocietygallery.com/the-pieta-a-story-in-five-parts.
3
Harry Eiss, A Detailed Explication of T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Doors of Perception,
Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Ch. 9, pp. 302, 2022.
4
Ascanio Condivi, “Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti” [1553], trans. G. Bull in Michelangelo, Life Letters, and
Poetry, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.22.
be a part of the same Trinity.5 They're all part of God and since he is the heavenly father by
that logic Mary is both Christ's mother and also his daughter. Making them both look the
same age is probably meant to enforce the theory that they are born each other's child and
parent.
Unlike any other art by Michelangelo, the
Vatican Pieta was the first and only of the
works that he signed. His signature is
carved on a band placed diagonally across
the Virgin's chest in Latin and reads:
“MICHAEL AGELVS BONAROTVS
FLORENT FACIEBA”-Michelangelo
Buonarroti, a Florentine, was the maker of
this work. Giorgio Vasari, in his 1550
biography of Michelangelo, alludes to the location of the signature being inappropriate in the
eyes of the viewers. According to him, Michelangelo's signature was a sign of his love and
satisfaction for the artwork. However, in the second edition of the biography (1568), Vasari
gives a different explanation for the presence of his sign. In it, he narrates an incident where
after the pieta was displayed, Michelangelo overheard a group of spectators commending the
artistry employed in the making of the sculpture and attributing it to Cristoforo Solari da
Angera. Michelangelo found it very odd that someone else was being credited for his work.
Consequently, one night he went back and spontaneously carved his name on the pieta.6
Whether the mark was out of love or egotism, a lot of historians argue that Michelangelo’s
signature was not spontaneous, but planned. They claim that the motion of the drapery around
the band, its compression under it, and the bunching around it could only be possible if he
had already planned his mark on the sculpture. The discrepancy in Vasari’s account of the
event in the two biographies also arises doubts about its spontaneity. The fact that
5
Barolini, Teodolinda. “Paradiso33: Invisible Ink.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY:
Columbia University Libraries, 2014. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divinecomedy/paradiso/paradiso-33/.
6
Aileen June Wang, Michelangelo's Signature, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Summer, 2004, Vol. 35, No. 2),
pp. 447-449, 2004, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20476944.
Michelangelo's disciple Ascanio Condivi, who wrote a biography of the artist that was
primarily supervised by the master himself, published in 1553, neglected to mention the Pieta
signature is also instructive. Condivi goes into great detail regarding the Virgin and Christ but
says absolutely nothing about the signature. Condivi's omission indicates Michelangelo's
reluctance to draw attention to that portion of the sculpture, maybe because the artist realized
that some people thought it was too brazen and even irreverent. It is clear that the signature
was more than just an artist's mark that identified the creator and invoked classical precedent;
it had personal significance for Michelangelo himself given the audacity of the idea, the
prominent placement of the inscription, and the funerary context for which the sculpture was
intended.7
Another aspect of the Vatican Pieta that calls the viewer’s attention is the beauty and
perfection reflected in the features of both Jesus and Mary. Mary has a serene, unadulterated,
luminous, and reflective face. As opposed to earlier artists from the region north of the Alps,
where the Pieta picture was more common, Michelangelo does not depict her in fits of
suffering, which raised a lot of questions among the viewers. People in the Renaissance
questioned Michelangelo's decision to depict Mary as being so young and unaffected by the
catastrophe. This might be because she was still mothering.8 She is still holding and taking
care of her son. She is embodying strength and acceptance, for she knows that Christ will be
resurrected.
Lastly, another intriguing feature of this sculpture is how Christ appears to have fallen asleep
peacefully rather than dying. He scarcely has any apparent wounds. After being nailed on the
cross, his hands and feet have only minor injuries, and he appears to be in a state of peaceful
repose. Despite being overcome with grief, the Virgin Mary seems at ease. Regardless of
their sadness, the two figures evoke Neo-Platonic ideals of beauty on earth mirroring divine
beauty, according to which the Virgin Mary and Jesus' beautiful figures are a reflection of it.
Beauty, perfection, and humanism were common concepts and beliefs belonging to the
renaissance period. The flawlessness of both the figures' features is a testament to that.
7
Irving Lavin, Divine Grace and the Remedy of the Imperfect. Michelangelo's Signature on the St Peter's
"Pietà", Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 34, No. 68, Papers dedicated to Peter Humfrey: part II, 2013, pp. 279,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24595693.
8
Debra Brehmer, The Pieta: A Story in Five Parts, Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Arts,
https://www.portraitsocietygallery.com/the-pieta-a-story-in-five-parts.
Bibliography
S. Sethi, Zaid. "Michelangelo Artist Overview and Analysis". The Art Story.
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/michelangelo/. 2018.
Brehmer, Debra. The Pieta: A Story in Five Parts, Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary
Arts. https://www.portraitsocietygallery.com/the-pieta-a-story-in-five-parts. 2011.
Eiss, Harry. A Detailed Explication of T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
The Doors of Perception. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Ch. 9. pp. 286-338. 2022.
Condivi, Ascanio. “Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti” [1553]. trans. G. Bull in Michelangelo,
Life Letters, and Poetry. Oxford University Press. 1999.
Teodolinda, Barolini. “Paradiso33: Invisible Ink.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante.
New York. NY: Columbia University Libraries.
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-33/. 2014.
June Wang, Aileen. Michelangelo's Signature, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Summer.
Vol. 35. No. 2. pp. 447-473. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20476944. 2004.
Lavin, Irving. Divine Grace and the Remedy of the Imperfect. Michelangelo's Signature on
the St Peter's "Pietà". Artibus et Historiae. Vol. 34. No. 68. Papers dedicated to Peter
Humfrey: part II. pp. 277-328. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24595693. 2013.
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