Magnum Opus

A crowd gathers around the masterpiece that is the Pietà. Each observer praised the sculpture as if Mary and her son Jesus were in their midst. One of them asked another “who was the man responsible for this work of genius?” The other replied, “Our Gobbo of Milan.” Michelangelo standing behind the crowed cringed in anger; he said nothing. Resenting that his work was credited to another, that night himself in the chapel with a light and his chisel and carved the words “Michaelagelus Bonarotus Florentin Facieba” (Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this) on the sash running across Mary’s chest. This piece would be the only work he ever signed.

The Pietà depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after his crucifixion. The masterpiece was carved out of a single piece of marble. He believed that the marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has. In the Pietà, the genius lies with the balance of Renaissance humanism and classical Greek theory that makes both Mary and Jesus attain such beauty and naturalism. Giorgio Vasari, Renaissance painter, writer, historian and friend of Michelangelo comments:

“The rarest artist could add nothing to its design and grace, or finish the marble with such polish and art, for it displays the utmost limits of sculpture. Among its beauties are the divine draperies, the foreshortening of the dead Christ and the beauty of the limbs with the muscles, veins, sinews, while no better presentation of a corpse was ever made. The sweet air of the head and the harmonious joining of the arms and legs to the torso, with the pulses and veins, are marvelous, and it is a miracle that a once shapeless stone should assume a form that Nature with difficulty produces in flesh.”

-          The Lives

The sculpture retains the shape of a pyramid with the vertex located on Mary’s head. This gives the sculpture balance and gives the illusion that the figures are proportionate to each other. As you can see Mary is substantially bigger than Jesus, the reason being that it is difficult in depicting a fully grown man in a woman’s lap. Michelangelo tackled this by hiding the size of Mary with the full length drapery that she adorns making it appear as if they are naturally proportioned.

As we take a closer look, Michelangelo retained Mary’s youthful appearance. Mary, who was approximately in her late 40’s at the time of Jesus’s death, is depicted as a young, beautiful, elegant, robust woman. Some critics during his time complained that he made the Virgin too young to which he replied:

“Some fools say that he has made the Virgin too young, they ought to know that spotless virgins keep their youth for a long time, while people afflicted like Christ do the reverse”

-          The Lives

He was thought to also say that he was thinking of his own mothers face when, who had passed when he was only 5 years old, while he was working on the project.

 Michelangelo wanted the Pietà to be less about death and more of a sense of serenity. But there is a feeling of physical isolation between the two figures as in the real sense of death. Michelangelo himself, an orphan in his own right, you can feel how his life was poured into this sculpture. His magnum opus.

Learn more about Michelangelo and Renaissance sculpture with Art Theory For Beginners!