Roman pietà

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Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica

Michelangelo's Roman Pietà [pjeta] , often referred to as Vatican Pietà called, is one of the most famous images of this very popular in the western art subjects . The marble statue was made in Rome between 1498 and 1499, according to other sources until 1500. When it was completed, Michelangelo was in his mid twenties. It is one of the most important works of Western sculpture and an outstanding example of the art of the High Renaissance . The statue is in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican in Rome.

history

The creation of the Pietà falls during Michelangelo's first stay in Rome from 1496 to 1501. In addition to its intrinsic importance, Michelangelo's Roman Pietà is interesting from an art-historical point of view as it is the first (known) sculpture of this type created by an Italian sculptor. At the same time, the Roman Pietà is the first of a series of several Pietà depictions by Michelangelo (although the other works have remained unfinished). In terms of art history, it should also be noted that Michelangelo's Roman Pietà is one of the first groups - if not the first - in the newer sculpture, which ancient sculptures are not inferior in terms of technical mastery.

  • Pietà, before 1550, Museo dell 'Opera del' Duomo, Florence

  • Pietà di Palestrina, attribution unclear, Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Galleria dell 'Accademia), Florence

  • Pietà Rondanini, 1552–1564, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Milan

Like most works of art of the time, the Pietà was commissioned. In 1497, the French Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas , Benedictine Abbot of Saint Denis and Ambassador of Charles VIII to the Vatican, commissioned Michelangelo through the mediation of the Roman nobleman and banker Jacopo Galli (who had already acquired a recently completed statue of Bacchus by the master) with the production of a pietà out of marble to adorn the tomb of the cardinal in one of the chapels of the church of Santa Petronilla, which was on the south side of Old Saint Peter . The cardinal died on August 6, 1498, probably before the statue was completed. The commissioning of a Pietà by the French clergyman may have been due to the popularity of Vespers in France - in Italy, however, this subject was still quite new at the time. At the end of 1497, Michelangelo received a first advance payment for the order. The written contract was only drawn up around August 27, 1498. In the text of the contract, the cardinal's ideas are precisely specified: "A pietà made of marble, that is, the clothed Virgin Mary with the dead, unclothed Christ in her arms." The contract provided for a life-size statue, which - according to the explicit contract text - all until then Marble works of art known in Rome should surpass in beauty - a, as Ragionieri notes, an extremely bold demand in view of the abundance of ancient statues in Rome. According to the contract, the group should be completed within one year.

Michelangelo probably made the first drawings and models as early as the summer of 1497. In March 1498 he went to Carrara to personally select a marble block for the statue from the marble quarries there, a procedure to which he remained faithful later. The master personally supervised the transport from Carrara to Rome. Work on the marble began in 1498 and was completed in 1499 or 1500. At the time of completion, Michelangelo, born on March 6, 1475, was around 25 years old. Lübke sees the Pietà as the end of the youth period in Michelangelo's work.

Michelangelo received a fee of 450 gold ducats for the Pietà (according to Rattner / Danzer equivalent to at least 50,000 euros in today's monetary value).

The original location of the statue was, as agreed in the contract with the cardinal, Santa Petronilla. Since this church was destroyed in the course of the reconstruction of the Peterskirche, the Pietà was brought to the chapel of the "Vergine della Febbre" in Alt-Sankt-Peter in 1517. Another location was the choir of Sixtus IV. The Pietà has been in its current location in the first chapel of the right aisle in St. Peter's Basilica since 1749; it is also known as the “Chapel of Pietà” after the statue. The Pietà was removed from St.Peter's Basilica for the first and so far last time for the transport to the World's Fair in New York in 1964.

The Roman Pietà was damaged several times. During a change, four fingers of the free left hand were broken off, which were restored by Giuseppe Lirioni in 1736, although it is unclear to what extent this restoration corresponded to the original. One of the fingers does not seem to be from the original. On May 21, 1972, the previously free standing statue was severely damaged by the mentally deranged assassin Laszlo Toth with several hammer blows. The damage affected the virgin's left arm and face, among other things. For the restoration, original fragments were used as far as possible, supplemented where necessary by a paste made of marble powder and polyester . The group of experts, led by Deoclecio Redig de Campos , ultimately succeeded in restoring the statue true to the original. Since this attack, the Pietà has been behind a pane of bulletproof glass.

Lineup

The statue rests on a pedestal and can only be viewed from below and from the front and from a distance. This - according to Wölfflin "barbaric" - gives a different impression of the statue than the actually intended viewing at "eye level". The upper body of the Madonna is inclined further forward than the current forced perspective suggests. This list also makes it impossible to look more closely at the face of the Savior. Smaller details cannot be seen from a distance. The ground-level copy in the Vatican Museums allows a better perspective. Hartt / Finn also find fault with Michelangelo's taste, which is completely contrary to the baroque opulence of the current location.

role models

Iconographically, the origin of the Roman Pietà can be found in Northern European Vespers, on which the Mother of God is more likely to be depicted as an old woman plagued by pain. According to Weinberger, a need arose in Italy at that time for sculptural representations of the Pietà through corresponding figures imported from Germany, which of course could not meet the aesthetic requirements of Italian art lovers.

Michelangelo is not the first Italian artist to adopt the subject of the Pietà and the Vesper picture. A very early representation in Italian painting is the panel painting Cristo in pietà et il donatore Giovanni di Elthini by Simone di Filippo (called Simone dei Crocefissi) from 1368, Museo Davi Bergellini, Bologna. In addition, earlier depictions of the Lamentation of Christ can be found in Italian painting - a subject that cannot always be clearly distinguished from that of the Pietà. The pictorial type of the Pietà or the Lamentation of Christ is often taken up from the middle of the 15th century by northern Italian painters - e.g. Giovanni Bellini (1437 to 1516), who, like Michelangelo later, do not show Christ tortured to death, but rather the Aestheticize the death of Jesus as sleep in the drawing of the humanism awakening in the Renaissance. Between around 1483 and 1493 Pietro Perugino painted a Pietà that is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence . About two years later, Perugino completed a Lamentation of Christ. (see picture). Hartt also points out that the 20-year-old Michelangelo must have come into contact with a German Vespers painting there while working in the Basilica San Domenico in Bologna (1494–95).

description

Physical characteristics

Michelangelo's Pietà is made from a single block of white Carrara marble that has hardly any inclusions. It is particularly fine-grain marble of the Statuario type . The surface is heavily polished and appears shiny. The dimensions of the statue are: Height: 174 cm; Width: 195 cm; Depth: 69 cm. The mass of the statue is about 2600 kilograms. An X-ray analysis of the Pietà during the preparations for its transfer to New York in 1964 showed no critical weaknesses in the stone - an indication that Michelangelo carefully selected the marble block.

general description

3D model

The statue is a group that, as is customary with this subject, shows the Mother of God in a sitting position, cradling the body of Jesus taken from the cross on her knees and in her arms. The underground is formed by a rock, which according to biblical tradition should be Golgotha , the place of Jesus' crucifixion. The Madonna is fully clothed, while her son is bare except for a loincloth. The figures are anatomically precisely represented, muscles, tendons, blood vessels and other anatomical features are carefully worked out, which gives the sculpture additional tension and dynamism. Hartt speaks of a “flawless anatomy, unmatched since classical antiquity”. The true-to-life representation is due not least to Michelangelo's anatomical studies, namely the dissection of corpses.

Maria is shown significantly larger than her son (standing the Madonna would measure over two meters). This peculiarity in the design is due to the technical difficulty of depicting a group consisting of a woman holding a grown man on her knees in a balanced composition: If the natural proportions were preserved, the body of Jesus would almost inevitably have to be too large and seem too heavy for Maria to hold on her lap. According to Justi, Michelangelo wanted "to avoid the impression of heaviness [...], to disguise the weight of the body on the woman's lap [...] ... He achieved this through the position, view, size and shape of the figures".

The disproportionality of the two figures in no way irritates the viewer. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that a direct size comparison is difficult because of the different positions of the figures, especially the seated position of Mary; on the other hand, Michelangelo took care to maintain the proportions of the heads of the figures, which allow a direct comparison. In addition, Mary's upper body gains the width required for the composition, in particular through the puffed out robe, which appears quite natural to the viewer. In addition, the body of Jesus is shown in the narrow side view, in contrast to the broad front view of the body of the Madonna. A comparison between Michelangelo's Pietà and the Vesper picture shown above in the St. George's Church in Dinkelsbühl with the completely “unnatural” looking because much too small Jesus shows how masterfully Michelangelo solved this problem. On the other hand, the example of the Krakow Pietà (see illustration) shows what results other artists have achieved with a proportional representation of both figures.

The monumental folds of the Madonna's robe are striking, in which Hartt recognizes a reminiscence of Donatello's late work. Wölfflin criticizes a "somewhat intrusive richness" of the garments. The generous dimensioning of the same in the lower part of the group is not an end in itself, but serves, in addition to the different sizes of the figures, also to enable a natural and relaxed positioning of the body of Jesus in Mary's lap and arm. The garment parts seem to have a supporting function and promote the compositional balance of the work.

The group is less than 70 centimeters deep. The reverse was also executed by Michelangelo, but less carefully and detailed than the front. For the reasons mentioned, the group can only develop its full effect in the frontal view, but not in the side or even the rear view.

composition

The statue shows a pyramidal structure. Mary's head forms the apex from which the outer lines of the work fan out downwards. On the right-hand side of the viewer, Mary's head, her left arm and the left leg of Jesus form a line, on the opposite side the pyramidal composition is supported by a monumental fold of Mary's robe. In the vertical, the group is divided into three parts: the upper part is made up of the head and torso of Mary, the middle part of Jesus' body, the lower part is dominated by the folds of the robe of Our Lady. This tripartite division corresponds to the statue's depth increasing from top to bottom. Also to be emphasized are the diagonal lines running down to the right when viewed from the viewer, formed by the head and upper body of Jesus, his right arm and the wide, curved folds in the lower part. This sophisticated geometry gives the work compositional balance. Wölfflin judges the composition as follows: “To group two life-size bodies in marble was something new in itself and the task of placing a male body on the lap of the seated woman was of the most difficult kind. One expects a hard horizontal line and dry right angles; Michelangelo did what nobody could have done back then: everything is twisting and twisting, the bodies fit together effortlessly, Maria holds and is not crushed by the burden, the corpse clearly develops in all directions and is expressive in every line . "

Maria

Omega fold on Mary's head

The Madonna is facing the viewer frontally. She supports the corpse of her son with her right arm, whereby the hand with the splayed fingers does not touch the divine corpse directly, but both are separated by the fabric of Maria's robe. The left arm is slightly angled, with the palm of the hand half-open pointing upwards, a gesture in which, according to Bode, the “mother's silent pain” is expressed. The Madonna is dressed in a sweeping robe with rich folds, which only leaves the face, neck and hands uncovered. Even the hair disappears completely under the headscarf. A horizontal line across the forehead indicates the edge of a transparent veil. Maria's gaze is directed downwards, the eyelids are lowered. The expression on her face is difficult to read, but it seems more remote than sad. According to Justi, the face of the Madonna “on closer inspection is expressionless”. Many commentators highlight the beauty of the faces of Mary and Jesus. This is particularly true of the Madonna, to whom Michelangelo, according to Clément, gave a “peculiar youthful and austere beauty”.

The disproportionality of the Madonna's face, which is somewhat too small in comparison to the body, which, as already explained, was necessary in order not to make the figure of the Virgin appear too large in comparison with her son, is solved by Michelangelo by means of a lavishly worked drapery of the veil.

Unlike his (Northern European) predecessors, Michelangelo does not show Our Lady as plagued by pain - Michelangelo's Madonna is not a typical Mater Dolorosa , as it has been portrayed by so many artists before and after him. “The tearful face, the distortion of pain, the fainting drooping had given earlier; Michelangelo says: the Mother of God should not cry like an earthly mother. She leans her head very quietly, the features are motionless and language is only in the lowered left hand: half-open, it accompanies the monologue of pain. ”Roeck explains the obvious differences between the Northern European Vesper image and Michelangelo's Roman Pietà with the different cultural contexts in cis- and transalpine Europe: “The calmed pain of the adolescent Madonna, who is holding the 'beautiful' corpse of her son on her lap, aims at an expert society familiar with ancient forms; to encourage 'compassion', this task of the devotional picture was fulfilled by a simple carved Vesper picture, which showed the sorrowful Mary with the rigid corpse of Christ, in a completely different way than the shimmering marble figure. "Justi speaks of" peace of mind "or with reference to the Madonna . "Stillness of the soul".

The problem of the Madonna's youthfulness

One of the most striking features of the statue is the fact that the Madonna is depicted too young to be the mother of a grown son - in fact, Mary appears younger than her son. Hartt explains: Michelangelo "depicted the Mother of God in her eternal reality beyond age and time - virgin mother, mystical bride, mortal vessel of the divine purpose of incarnation and redemption". Here Michelangelo combines the depiction of the young Mary with the baby Jesus, familiar to his contemporaries, with the usual Vespers, on which an aged Madonna can be seen. This representation, which caused some irritation among Michelangelo's contemporaries, is often viewed as an innovation by Michelangelo. Hartt points out, however, that already in the Pietà Peruginos (see illustration above), which was completed between around 1483 and 1493, there is no obvious age difference between the Madonna and her son (the face of the Madonna in Perugino's picture, however, appears much more ageless than youthful In any case, age is very difficult to determine).

A common interpretation of the Madonna's youthfulness is that the Virgin Mary, because of her immaculateness and flawless virtue, is not as subject to natural aging as ordinary people. It is an interpretation in the sense of Neoplatonism , according to which the body is the image of the soul, so that the face of Mary expresses not only physical but also moral beauty. Michelangelo said the following to his friend, student and first biographer Ascanio Condivi : “Do you not know that chaste women are much fresher than those who are not? But how much more a virgin who never lost the slightest sinful desire in the soul! But even more ... we have to believe that the divine power came to her aid so that the virginity and immortal purity of Our Lady would appear all the more clearly to the world. "

The portrayal of the Mother of God as a young woman could also be inspired by a verse of Dante in the Divine Comedy , where in the first line of the 33rd song of Paradise Mary was written as “Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio” (“Virgin mother, daughter of yours Son ") is addressed. The fact that Michelangelo was well acquainted with the Divine Comedy could speak for Dante's influence.

Incidentally, the anachronism inherent in the statue also suggests the notion of Mary as the "bride of Christ", which was widespread in medieval theology and who, after the Assumption of the Virgin , is enthroned as Queen of Heaven at the side of her son Jesus Christ . In this respect, Michelangelo's idea of ​​combining the over 30-year-old Jesus with a youthful Mary is by no means new, even if Michelangelo probably didn't think of this special theological interpretation.

Ultimately, it cannot be decided which motive Michelangelo chose to portray the mother of the Savior, who is over 30 years old, as a young woman. Verdon / Rossi emphasize that the above explanation by the master to his biographer Condivi came many years after the completion of the Pietà (Condivi was only born in 1512), and that the young Michelangelo, while working on the sculpture, probably more likely to be faced with aesthetic and technical problems than was busy with content-related issues. A less spectacular explanation for Mary's youthfulness could therefore be that the esthete Michelangelo was unable to depict the Madonna in any other way than in radiant, youthful beauty.

Hartt also does not satisfy Michelangelo's “theological” explanation of the youthfulness of the Madonna: While Condivi was very impressed by the explanation, Hartt sees it as “a stupid [foolish] answer to a stupid question”. However, it would be a mistake to reject the above interpretations as completely baseless or insignificant. For one thing, a master of Michelangelo's rank undoubtedly deserves the best and most careful study possible of every aspect of his work; on the other hand, Michelangelo's deep religiosity must also be taken into account, which does not make a theological motif or such an interpretation appear absurd.

Jesus

The upper body of the figure of Christ runs diagonally to the lower right, the head has sunk backwards in death and rests in the crook of Mary's arm, the upper and lower legs form approximately right angles. Hartt speaks of a "flowing rhythm" of the Christ body. Jesus is depicted with long hair and bearded, the hair is curly, as was rather unusual for depictions of the Savior in Italian art of that time. The face of Jesus is relatively long and has a pointed chin. The overall impression of the face, including the curly hair, shows similarities with engravings by the German engraver and painter Martin Schongauer , with whose work Michelangelo was at least partially familiar.

While the Madonna is larger than life, the depiction of Jesus is natural. This disproportionality of the two figures can give the viewer the impression that Jesus became a child again in death, who was held in his lap by his mother - with regard to the Vesper picture, Nagel generally speaks of the fact that it has an emotional reminiscence of the Virgin loaded with the baby Jesus. In contrast to Mary, the Redeemer is shown roughly at the age that, according to tradition, he was at the time of the crucifixion.

The relative fragility - the "lean, delicate forms" - of the "perfectly beautiful naked body of Christ", the limply dangling arm and the head of the Redeemer leaning backwards in death and lying in the crook of Mary awaken deep compassion in the viewer. The Son of God is shown here in his humanity - and mortality -. At the same time, it reveals the greatness of the sacrifice that Jesus made for all people. "The body of Christ ... seems to feel the torture that God-Man had to endure beyond the rest of death." According to Wölfflin, the "pushed up shoulder and the sunken head ... give the dead an accent of suffering of unsurpassable power".

Vasari's exuberant judgment of the Christ body reads: "We must forsake the thought of ever finding another statue with limbs so beautiful, or a body executed with such great art ... or a dead man as dead as this." One also highlights the beauty of the Christ figure, in which Michelangelo's veneration for the ancient forms is manifested - Christ and the Greek god Apollo are fused in the figure.

The traces that the nails and the lance left on the body of Jesus are only hinted at. The feet have the stigmata on the instep , but not the sole of the free-floating left foot. Those wounds which the crown of thorns must have caused are completely absent. In general, the head shows no signs of martyrdom, in particular the face of the Redeemer appears completely detached in death. In contrast to Clément, for example, Gardner / Kleiner does not focus on the suffering of Christ when looking at the corpse: "Christ seems to have died less than he slipped into a peaceful sleep in Mary's maternal arms." Hartt points out in connection with the only hinted at Stigmata and the peaceful facial expression of the Son of God indicate that Michelangelo loathed all artistic expression throughout his life that could injure the beauty of the human body - the master himself spoke in this context of the "mortal veil that would cover the divine intention" . “The wounds in the hands, feet and side that had to be shown appear as inconspicuous as possible so as not to obstruct the meditation of the viewer on the beauty of the blessed mother and the immeasurably valuable, endlessly repeated, ever-present Eucharistic sacrifice of her Son to disturb."

signature

The Pietà is the only statue that Michelangelo signed; on the narrow sash that runs across the breast of the Madonna is carved in Roman antiqua : MICHEL.A [N] GELVS BONAROTVS FLORENT [INVS] FACIEBA [T]. (Michelangelo Buonarroti from Florence [made this].) Giorgio Vasari gives the reason for the signature that one day Michelangelo happened to witness how a group of visitors from Lombardy ascribed the statue to an artist from Milan ( Cristoforo Solari ) have. The signature can also be interpreted as an indication that Michelangelo himself viewed his Pietà as an extraordinary work. In later works, a signature was no longer necessary due to Michelangelo's great fame. Verdon / Rossi see the signature as an indication that the young, not yet widely known Michelangelo at that time had his own reputation as an artist in mind.

style

Just like later works by Michelangelo, the Pietà has an extremely dynamic effect, an impression that is mainly caused by the figures frozen in flowing movements and the dramatic folds of the robe of Our Lady. The representation corresponds, at least in this respect, more to the Hellenistic lust for drama and passion than to the balance and calm of Greek classical art . In contrast to most of Michelangelo's other works, the Pietà - and especially the figure of Christ - does not appear athletic, but slender, downright fragile, in which Hartt recognizes a strong contrast to the Greek ideal. In the context of Michelangelo's oeuvre, but also of the art of the (high) Renaissance as a whole, the Roman Pietà occupies a special position and appears almost Gothic . In the purity of the thought, however, the Renaissance work of art can be recognized.

Art historians see the Pietà as an expression of the modern, humanistic image of man that awakened in Italy during the Renaissance - the birth of the individual. “Marble no longer shows simply a beauty of an abstract, general kind; Edited by a powerful hand, it reflects thoughts and feelings. "

reception

The judgment of posterity about the Pietà is unanimous: "Since then, all art historians and biographers have actually given the Pietà the verdict 'perfect'."

Michelangelo's contemporaries

The Pietà was immediately recognized as an important work of art by Michelangelo's contemporaries and was also a major public event in Rome immediately after it became known. With this work, Michelangelo suddenly went from "a respected artist to the most famous sculptor in Italy". Vasari speaks of "grandissima fama" (highest fame), which Michelangelo achieved with the statue.

The biographer Vasari, who is always somewhat exuberant and relatively uncritical in his judgments regarding Michelangelo, expresses himself as follows about the Pietà: “No sculptor or other extraordinary artist should even think of achieving what Michelangelo achieved here in the representation or in grace has, or with all the effort to measure himself against him in fineness, purity or chiselling of the marble; because here you can find everything that art can and does. "

Reception in the history of art of the 19th century

Lübke sees in the Pietà “a wonderfully structured, deeply felt and nobly finished marble group, in the heads of moving expression” According to Müller, the Pietà is “a wonderfully wonderful group of great simplicity in composition; Softness and gentleness, and of delightful beauty in the mind ”.

Grimm, who describes the Pietà as Michelangelo's main work, comes to the following conclusion: “What was done by sculptors in Italy before this work is in the shadows and takes on the appearance of attempts that are missing somewhere, be it in the thought or in the Execution: here both coincide. The artist, the work and the circumstances of the time intermesh, and something emerged that deserves to be perfectly named. "

Burckhardt's judgment is as follows: “Here, first of all, in the more recent sculpture, we can again speak of a group in the highest sense; the corpse is placed extremely nobly and forms the most wonderful whole with the figure and movement of the fully clothed Madonna. The anatomical forms are not yet fully developed, but the heads are of a pure beauty that Michelangelo never achieved again later. ”Bode describes the Pietà as Michelangelo's finest sculptural creation. Justi finds the following words: “This is the Pietà Michelangelo, which he created in the morning of his life at the end of the old century, in the largest place in the world, for the first temple of Christianity. It is just as important as an expression of religious ideas as it is as a work of art in sculpture. "

Reception in the history of art of the 20th century

According to Herbert Von Eine, Michelangelo's Pietà represents a successful synthesis of the tradition of the established subject of the Pietà and the Vesper image on the one hand and the aesthetic expectations of his contemporaries, which were influenced by the preoccupation with the ancient models, on the other. The Roman Pietà is a new design by medieval form, but without destroying its foundations. Like other art historians, Von Eine emphasizes the fact that Michelangelo completed the Roman Pietà: In this relatively early work, nothing of the inner conflicts that become manifest in the non-finito of later works can be felt ; everything is in harmony, profound, but not dark.

On the one hand, Crispino emphasizes the technical mastery, especially in working out the anatomical details; on the other hand the dignified beauty of the characters and the touching poetry of the group as a whole. According to the author, the master never again achieved such purity and perfection in his later works. Alluding to the moment of non-finito in Michelangelo, Crispino sees the Pietà as a kind of demonstration of the achievement of a formal (technical) end goal, from which the artist could break new ground. (Of course, some of Michelangelo's later sculptures, such as the Moses in the Julius tomb , are formally carefully worked through.)

Gardner and Kleiner pay tribute to the Pietà as follows: "Michelangelo transformed the marble into flesh, hair and fabric, with an almost unprecedented feeling for textures ... The tender sadness of the beautiful and young Mary who mourns the death of her son is also breathtaking."

Verdon and Rossi also emphasize the beauty of the Roman Pietà, but at the same time criticize it as an immature work in which the content dimension is sacrificed to aesthetics. In particular, the portrayal of the Mother of God as a young, radiant beauty cannot convince the authors; the Pietà Giovanni Bellini, which was written a few years later, with its aged, grieving Madonna, is more convincing and moving.

Reception in the fine arts and painting

A Pietà created by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli (1507–1563) in the San Matteo Church in Genoa is based relatively closely on Michelangelo's Roman Pietà. In the cathedral of Gubbio ( Umbria ) there is an altarpiece made by Dono Doni (after 1500–1575), which shows the Lamentation of Christ with a Pietà, which is a copy of the Roman Pietà in every detail.

The Sicilian sculptor Antonello Gagini created a Pietà in marble in 1512, which is inspired by Michelangelo's Pietà. The work is now in the Matrice di Maria Santissima Addolorata church in Soverato ( Calabria ).

Käthe Kollwitz was inspired by Michelangelo's Roman Pietà for her 38 cm high sculpture of a Pietà, created in 1937/38. A replica of the work, enlarged four times, is in the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the victims of war and tyranny ( Neue Wache ) in Berlin, Unter den Linden.

Apart from the artistic reception at a high level, Michelangelo's Pietà was and is one of the most popular Christian works of art, and photographs of the pictorial work have therefore been used as a template for commercial graphics (e.g. for domestic devotional pictures or death notes ) since the beginning of the 20th century .

Reception in the film

Michelangelo's creation of images of his Roman Pieta was also reflected in the imagery of film. In his film Topas, Alfred Hitchcock staged a couple after being tortured by the Cuban secret service based on the example of the Roman Pietà.

In the 1975 film The Messiah by Roberto Rossellini about the life of the Redeemer, the Virgin Mary is played throughout the entire story by the then seventeen-year-old Roman Mita Ungaro . The film also contains a long shot in which Michelangelo's Roman Pietà is re-enacted, whereby the Jesus played by Pier Maria Rossi looks much older than the Madonna.

The Korean director Kim Ki Duk says he was inspired by Michelangelo's work, which he saw as a "sign of the sharing of the pain of all humanity" during a visit to St. Peter's Basilica for his Venice award-winning film Pietà . The poster for the film is a clear reminiscence of the Pietà.

Replicas and copies

The Pietà was often copied in marble / plaster and bronze - often for installation in churches, and depictions of the work can also be found in paintings. A copy is in the Vatican Museums, in Germany a replica can be seen in the Catholic Saint Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin.

Michelangelo's Pietà is a popular object in the Roman and Catholic devotional trade as a full sculpture, relief, medal, colored picture of saints and the like .

Contemporary sources

  • Ascanio Condivi
    • Vita di Michelagnolo Buonarroti raccolta per Ascanio Condivi da la Ripa Transone (Rome 1553) . Part I: Full text with a foreword and bibliographies (Fontes. 34) full text .
    • The life of Michelangelo Buonarotti. Michelangelo's life is described by his pupil Ascanio Condivi. Translated from the Italian. u. ext. by Hermann Pemsel. Munich 1898.
  • Giorgio Vasari
    • Le vite de 'piú eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri . First edition Florence 1550. Second extended edition, Florence 1558.
    • The life of Michelangelo . Edited by Alessandro Nova. Modifications made by Caroline Gabbert. Newly translated into German by Victoria Lorini. Berlin 2009, (Edition Giorgio Vasari), ISBN 978-3-8031-5045-5 .

literature

General literature
  • Umberto Baldini: Michelangelo scultore . Rizzoli, Milan 1973.
  • Wilhelm Bode : The Italian sculpture [1922]. 2006, ISBN 1-4068-3213-8 .
  • Jacob Burckhardt : The Cicerone . [1855]. Volume 2 of the Critical Complete Edition, CH Beck 2001, ISBN 3-406-47156-0 .
  • Charles Cléments: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raffael . German by Carl Clauss, EA Seemann, 1870.
  • Enrica Crispino: Michelangelo, Vita d'artista . Giunti Editore Publishing House, 2001, ISBN 88-09-02274-2 .
  • Herbert von One: Michelangelo . Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1959. (Several new editions).
  • Helen Gardner, Fred S. Kleiner: Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective . Volume 2, 13th edition. Publisher Cengage Learning, 2010.
  • Rona Goffen: Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian. (Part 3: Michelangelo Buonarotti.) 2. printing. Yaele Univ. Press 2004., ISBN 0-300-10589-4 .
  • David Greve: Status and Statue: Studies on the Life and Work of the Florentine Sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. Volume 4 of Art, Music and Theater Studies, Verlag Frank & Timme GmbH, 2008.
  • Herman Grimm : Life of Michelangelo . [1868]. Volume 1, 3rd edition. 1868.
  • Frederick Hartt, David Finn: Michelangelo's three Pietàs , Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1974.
  • Carl Justi : Michelangelo. New contributions to explain his works. First edition Leipzig 1900.
  • Wilhelm Lübke : Outline of art history. 3. Edition. Ebner & Seubert, 1866.
  • Gioia Mori: The Fifteenth Century: the Early Renaissance. In: Marco Bussagli (Ed.): Rome. Art & Architecture, Könemann 1999, pp. 344–401.
  • Friedrich Müller : The artists of all times and peoples: or the lives and works of the most famous builders, sculptors, painters, copper engravers, form cutters, lithographers, etc. from the earliest art epochs to the present day. Ebner & Seubert 1857.
  • Pina Ragionieri: Michelangelo: The Man and the Myth . University of Pennsylvania Press 2008, ISBN 978-0-8122-2054-4 .
  • Josef Rattner , Gerhard Danzer: The birth of the modern European man in the Italian Renaissance 1350–1600: literary and intellectual history essays . Königshausen & Neumann, 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2934-8 .
  • Bernd Roeck : The historical eye: works of art as witnesses of their time: from the Renaissance to the Revolution . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004, ISBN 3-525-36732-5 .
  • Charles de Tolnay : The Youth of Michelangelo . Princeton University Press, 1949.
  • Timothy Verdon, Filippo Rossi: Mary in Western Art, Hudson Hills Publishing House, 2005, ISBN 0-9712981-9-X .
  • Edith Weinberger: Michelangelo the Sculptor. Taylor & Francis 1967.
  • Heinrich Wölfflin : The classical art: an introduction to the Italian Renaissance . F. Bruckmann, Munich 1914.
  • Frank Zöllner , Christof Thönes, Thomas Pöpper: Michelangelo. 1475-1654. The complete work. Cologne 2007. Therein: Pietà, 1498/99, pp. 408–409.
Individual questions
  • Francis Ames-Lewis, Paul Joannides: Reactions to the Master: Michelangelo's Effect on Art and Artists in the Sixteenth Century ., Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003, ISBN 0-7546-0807-7 .
  • Alexander Nagel: Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna in: Michael Wayne Cole (ed.): Sixteenth-century Italian art, Blackwell anthologies in art history, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006, ISBN 1-4051-0840-1 , p. 324 ff .
  • RJ Smick-McIntire: Evoking Michelangel's Vatican Pietà: Transformations in the Topos of Living Stones. In: The Eye of the Poet. Edited by A. Gohlany. Lewisburg 1996, pp. 23-52.
  • AJ Wang: Michelangelo's Signature. In: The Sixteenth Century Journal. Vol. 32/2. 2003, pp. 23-52.
  • Rudolf Preimesberger: Cloudy sources. Once again on Michelangelo's signature of the Pietà in St. Peter, in Nicole Hegener (ed.): Artist's signatures . From antiquity to the present, Petersberg 2013, pp. 142–149.

Web links

Commons : Pietà in Saint Peter's Basilica  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : replicas  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Burckhardt, p. 531.
  2. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 27.
  3. ↑ Ragionieri, p. 118.
  4. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 27.
  5. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 27.
  6. ↑ Baldini, p. 92.
  7. ↑ Weinberger, p. 68.
  8. ↑ Lübke, p. 517.
  9. ↑ Rattner / Danzer, p. 135.
  10. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 27.
  11. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 27.
  12. ↑ Doris Wacker: The art of preserving. 2nd Edition. Munich 2002.
  13. ↑ Wölfflin, p. 44.
  14. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 27.
  15. ↑ Weinberger, p. 68.
  16. ^ Greve, p. 288.
  17. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 21.
  18. ↑ Mori, p. 370.
  19. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 21.
  20. ↑ Article in: Life magazine of April 17, 1964, p. 87. Online: [1]
  21. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 42.
  22. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 47.
  23. ↑ Weinberger, p. 68.
  24. ^ Justi, p. 92.
  25. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 40.
  26. ↑ Wölfflin, p. 45.
  27. ↑ Verdon / Rossi, p. 160.
  28. ↑ Wölfflin, p. 44.
  29. ↑ Bode, p. 97.
  30. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 58.
  31. ^ Justi, p. 91.
  32. ↑ Burckhardt, p. 531.
  33. ↑ Clément, p. 31.
  34. ↑ Verdon / Rossi, p. 160.
  35. ↑ Wölfflin, p. 44.
  36. ↑ Roeck, p. 128.
  37. ^ Justi, p. 91.
  38. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 29.
  39. ↑ DeTolnay, S. 92nd
  40. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 28.
  41. ↑ Grimm, p. 164.
  42. ↑ DeTolnay, S. 92nd
  43. ↑ Grimm, p. 164.
  44. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 29.
  45. ↑ Verdon / Rossi, p. 160.
  46. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 29.
  47. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 28.
  48. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 57.
  49. ↑ Nagel, p. 339.
  50. ^ Justi, p. 92.
  51. ↑ Bode, p. 97.
  52. ↑ Clément, p. 32.
  53. ↑ Wölfflin, p. 44.
  54. ↑ Von Eine, p. 23.
  55. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 53 (illustration).
  56. ↑ Gardner / Kleiner, p. 467.
  57. ↑ Hartt / Finn (1976), p. 24.
  58. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 29.
  59. ↑ Tobias Burg: The signature. Forms and functions from the Middle Ages to the 17th century . LIT Verlag Münster, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-9859-5 , p. 163.
  60. ↑ Verdon / Rossi, p. 160.
  61. ↑ See e.g. B. the Laocoon group
  62. ↑ Hartt / Finn, p. 31.
  63. ↑ Clément, pp. 31-32.
  64. ↑ Rattner / Danzer, p. 134.
  65. ↑ Clément, p. 32.
  66. ↑ Grimm, p. 161.
  67. ↑ Lübke, p. 517.
  68. ↑ Müller, p. 210.
  69. ↑ Grimm, p. 163.
  70. ↑ Burckhardt, p. 531.
  71. ↑ Bode, p. 97.
  72. ↑ Justi, p. 98.
  73. ↑ Von Eine, p. 23.
  74. ↑ Crispino, p. 34.
  75. ↑ Gardner / Kleiner, p. 467.
  76. ↑ Verdon / Rossi, p. 160.
  77. ↑ Ames-Lewis / Joannides, p. 58.
  78. ↑ gubbio.name
  79. ↑ Ames-Lewis / Joannides, p. 58.
  80. ↑ calabriaonline.com
  81. ↑ Carola Marx: “I want to work during this time.” Käthe Kollwitz in the art metropolis of Berlin between the early days and the Third Reich. In: Matthias Harder, Almut Hille (ed.): Weltfabrik Berlin: A metropolis as a subject of literature; Studies in literature and regional studies . Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3245-4 , p. 64.
  82. ↑ Peter Brunette: Roberto Rossellini . Film / Cultural studies, University of California Press, 1996, ISBN 0-520-20053-5 , pp. 346–347.
  83. ↑ Manin, Giuseppina: Denaro, follia, Michelangelo: la via della redenzione. In: Corriere della Sera , September 5, 2012, pp. 42–43.