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The show
The exhibition – promoted and produced by the Municipality of Milan-Culture and organized by Palazzo Reale with the collaboration of Castello Sforzesco – is curated by Giovanna Mori, Domenico Piraina and Claudio Salsi.
Born from the synergy between the Municipality of Milan, the Municipality of Florence and the Vatican Museums , the exhibition will allow the visitor to appreciate Michelangelo's art and inventiveness through the comparison of three 19th-20th century casts, in ideal continuity with the exhibition that has just ended with great success at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence.
Michelangelo's Pietàs, in the form of their plaster casts, are now arriving in Milan, where they will be exceptionally brought together in a spectacular and exciting installation signed by Massimo Chimenti, from 22 October to 8 January 2023 , in the Sala delle Cariatidi of Palazzo Reale . which will act as a unique and unrepeatable stage. Three long sheets, unfolded for the entire height of the room and with a great visual impact, will be the background to the Pietàs, amplifying their strong aesthetic value and the religious sense evoked by the sculptor in three different phases of his life.
The cast of the Pietà of St. Peter's in the Vatican City was made in 1975 in the Cast and Plaster Laboratory of the Vatican Museums by Ulderico Grispigni; the occasion for its creation came at a dramatic moment for the Pietà, i.e. the vandalism of 1972 against the sculpture, which made it necessary to prepare a new cast.
The cast of the Pietà of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence , called Pietà Bandini , preserved in the collection of the Florentine Gipsoteca of the Porta Romana Art Institute, dates back to around 1882 and is due to the Florentine educator Oronzo Lelli.
The cast of the Pietà Rondanini was commissioned in 1953 to the Milanese trainer Cesare Gariboldi, in order to determine in the best possible way and in total safety, during the preparation tests of the marble statue, the ideal location for the sculpture, preserved since 1952 in the Castello Sforzesco .
Today exhibited after careful cleaning, it is kept in the deposits of the Museum of Ancient Art. On the occasion of the exhibition, careful documentary and iconographic research on the three Pietàs was promoted, aimed at creating a visual story capable of presenting episodes of recent history that had Michelangelo's sculptures as protagonists: restorations, installations and transfers immortalized while alive testimonies such as shots and period films from important Italian archives and photo libraries that collaborated on the project.
"Thanks to the three precious casts, this spectacular exhibition, set up in one of the most beautiful rooms in the city, will be able to tell visitors about the evolution of Michelangelo's sensitivity throughout his life - said Tommaso Sacchi, Councilor for Culture of the The municipality of Milan -. It will be a great emotion to be able to embrace all three Pietàs with a single glance, and the comparison, in Milan, can be supplemented by a visit to the Rondanini Pietà Museum at the Castello Sforzesco, where the original of the last Pietà is found, the one to which the Master worked until the last days of his life”.
As a young man Michelangelo created the Vatican Pietà, sculpting in his late maturity the so-called Bandini Pietàs of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, and the Rondanini Pietà of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. These examples tell of the sensitivity achieved by the Tuscan genius during his long life: from the grandiose early work with a classicist imprint, to the unfinished sculpture of his last days. Over sixty years separate the first Pietà, the Vaticana, from the last, the Rondanini.
Michelangelo set his hand to the Vatican one in 1498, when he was just twenty years old. The contract explicitly required "a Virgin Mary clothed with the dead Christ, naked in her arms". The sculpture releases a magniloquent, perfect beauty, in line with the first production of the Tuscan Master. Compared to the Madonna's face considered too young by some, the artist defended himself at the time, stating that it is precisely purity and holiness that preserve youth and beauty.
The youthful production is accompanied by that of the mature age, which sees Michelangelo greatly changed as a man and as an artist, in crisis to the point of wanting to abandon sculpture, his reason for living until then. The feeling that dominates these works is totally different, the style becomes less redundant in consideration of the human destiny of suffering, death and resurrection. When he sculpted the Pietà Bandini, between 1547 and 1555, Michelangelo Buonarroti was already an elderly man who often meditated on faith, on Christ's passion and on his imminent death.
The history of this Pietà is long and tormented. The marble, full of impurities and too hard, did not allow Michelangelo to complete the work, and led the artist to break a limb of Christ and, subsequently, to hammer the statue, breaking it in several points. The last Pietà is the Rondanini, now in the Castello Sforzesco. Michelangelo worked on this marble until shortly before his death. In the Tuscan artist's “sublime unfinished” finished parts alternate with unfinished or not worked parts at all, in a statuesque composition which - in the words of Luigi Serenthà - is capable of involving us "in the unstoppable movement of the body of the dead Christ inside the Mother's body".
The exhibition itinerary aims to focus precisely this in the eyes of visitors, namely the maturing of feelings of one of the greatest geniuses in the history of art, showing how the same drama can achieve such different outcomes, in the hands of an artist immersed in time and in the becoming of inspiration.
The catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale , makes use of the texts of the Scientific Committee and the curators and presents important essays and fact sheets relating to Michelangelo's three Pietàs starting from the early Vatican Pietà, to the Pietà of his maturity created for the Florence Cathedral and finally to the Pietà Rondanini, sculpted late in life and left unfinished.
photo credits Mauro Ranzani
