Michelangelo’s Pietas

Michelangelo’s three casts Pietas are exceptionally reunited in a spectacular and exciting display designed by Massimo Chimenti. Three long drapes, unfolded for the entire height of the room and with great visual impact, will serve as a backdrop to the Pietà, amplifying its strong aesthetic value and the religious sense evoked by the sculptor in three different phases of his life.

The cast of the Vatican City’s Pieta of St. Peter was made in 1975 within the Casts and Plaster Casts Laboratory of the Vatican Museums by Ulderico Grispigni; the occasion for its creation came at a dramatic moment for the Pieta namely the 1972 act of vandalism to the sculpture’s damage, which made it necessary to prepare a new cast.

The cast of the Pietà of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, known as the Bandini Pietà, preserved in the collection of the Florentine Gipsoteca of the Art Institute of Porta Romana, dates from around 1882 and is the work of Florentine moulder Oronzo Lelli.

The cast of the Rondanini Pietà was commissioned in 1953 from Milanese moulder Cesare Gariboldi, in order to best and safely determine the ideal location for the sculpture, which has been kept in the Castello Sforzesco since 1952, during the marble statue’s fitting tests. Now displayed in the exhibition after careful cleaning, it is kept in the deposits of the Museum of Ancient Art