Opera magazine
2022-02-08
LE TRE PIETÀ DI MICHELANGELO Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa
Exhibition curated by Barbara Jatta, Sergio Risaliti, Claudio Salsi, Timothy Verdon Opera del Duomo Museum, Michelangelo's Tribune room, Florence February 24 - August 1 2022
LE TRE PIETÀ DI MICHELANGELO
Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa
Exhibition curated by Barbara Jatta, Sergio Risaliti, Claudio Salsi, Timothy Verdon
Florence, 07/02/2022 - The exhibition “Le tre pietà di Michelangelo. Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa” (The three Pietas of Michelangelo. No one thinks of how much blood it costs.) will open to the public at the Opera del Duomo Museum of Florence on occasion of the meeting "Mediterranean frontier of peace 2022". The latter will see the meeting of the Bishops and Mayors of the Mediterranean in this city and will also be attended by Pope Francis.
For the first time, an exhibition offers the opportunity to see together the original of Michelangelo’s Pietà Bandini, recently restored, and the casts of the Vatican Pietà and of the Pietà Rondanini, from the Vatican Museums collection.
Curated by the museum directors Barbara Jatta, Sergio Risaliti, Claudio Salsi and Timothy Verdon, this exhibition project exceptionally involves the Vatican Museums, the Opera del Duomo Museum, the Museo Novecento in Florence, the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and the institutions Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the Municipality of Florence, the Municipality of Milan and Fabbrica di San Pietro.
Placed next to each other, the three Pietàs will offer the chance to study the evolution of Michelangelo's art as well as his spiritual maturation from his early youth - when in Rome he sculpted for the ancient St. Peter’s the work now in the north aisle of the Basilica – to his last season, when old he made the Pietà today in Florence and the Pietà Rondanini of Milan.
A journey longer than fifty years, that leads us from the ambition of the young man who carved his name on the chest of the Madonna in the Vatican version to the personal identification of the elderly artist, who in that of the Opera del Duomo Museum depicts himself in Nicodemus. Close to his own death, Michelangelo meditated deeply on the Passion of Christ, as he himself made it clear in a drawing of the Pietà, donated to Vittoria Colonna, Marquis of Pescara, where he wrote Dante’s verse: "No one thinks of how much blood it costs”. (Paradiso XXIX, 91). The sublime result of this spiritual meditation was the execution of the Pietà Rondanini.
Next autumn the three plaster casts of the original Pietà will be exhibited in the Sala delle Cariatidi of Palazzo Reale in Milan in a new designed setting.
A catalogue of the exhibition with essays and records by the curators Barbara Jatta (director of the Vatican Museums), Sergio Risaliti (director of the Museo Novecento Firenze), Claudio Salsi (director of the Superintendence of Castello Archaeological Museums and Historical Museums), Timothy Verdon (director of the Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence) and other scholars will be published by Silvana Editoriale.
Credits:
Cast of Pietà Vaticana di Michelangelo Buonarroti by Ulderico Grispigni, Luciano Ermo, Ennio De Santis, 1975, plaster, Città del Vaticano, Musei Vaticani (inv. 50661). Courtesy Musei Vaticani.
Pietà dell’Opera del Duomo 1547/1555 ca., marble, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Firenze. Courtesy Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Ph. Alena Fialová.
Cast of Pietà Rondanini, plaster, Città del Vaticano, Musei Vaticani (inv. 52478). Courtesy Musei Vaticani.
