Pietà (Michelangelo)
Sculpture by Michelangelo / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Pietà (Michelangelo)?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Madonna della Pietà (Italian: [pjeˈta]; 1498–1499), informally known as La Pietà, is a marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary at Mount Golgotha representing the "Sixth Sorrow" of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Michelangelo Buonarroti, now in Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is a key work of Italian Renaissance sculpture and often taken as the start of the High Renaissance.
La Madonna della Pietà Our Lady of Piety | |
---|---|
Artist | Michelangelo Buonarroti |
Year | 1498–1499 |
Type | Marble |
Subject | Jesus and Mary |
Dimensions | 174 cm × 195 cm (68.5 in × 76.8 in) |
Location | Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City |
Coordinates | 41°54′8″N 12°27′12″E |
Preceded by | Bacchus (Michelangelo) |
Followed by | David (Michelangelo) |
The sculpture captures the moment when Jesus, taken down from the cross, is given to his mother Mary. Mary looks younger than Jesus; art historians believe Michelangelo was inspired by a passage in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy: "O virgin mother, daughter of your Son ... your merit so ennobled human nature that its divine Creator did not hesitate to become your creature" (Paradiso, Canto XXXIII).[1] Michelangelo's aesthetic interpretation of the Pietà is unprecedented in Italian sculpture[2] because it balances the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with naturalism.
The statue was originally commissioned by a French cardinal, Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, then French ambassador in Rome. The Carrara marble sculpture was made, probably as an altarpiece, for the cardinal's funeral chapel in Old St Peter's. When this was demolished it was preserved, and later took its current location, the first chapel on the north side after the entrance of the new basilica, in the 18th century.[3] It is the only piece Michelangelo ever signed.
The statue was restored after the figure of Mary was vandalized on Pentecost Sunday of 1972 by a mentally disturbed man; it is now protected by a bulletproof glass screen.