July 11, 2022

Le tre Pietà by Michelangelo in Florence

At the Museum of the Opera del Duomo until October 3, 2022

Given the great success of the exhibition Michelangelo's Three Pieta's. You Don't Think How Much Blood Costs You at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence, it has been decided to extend it until October 3, 2022.

In the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo for the first time an exhibition compares, close to each other, in the hall of the Tribuna di Michelangelo of the Museum, the original of the Pietà Bandini, whose restoration has recently been completed, and the casts of the Vatican Pietà and the Pietà Rondanini from the Vatican Museums.

Curated by museum directors Barbara Jatta, Sergio Risaliti, Claudio Salsi and Timothy Verdon, the exhibition is a project that exceptionally involves the Vatican Museums, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the Museo Novecento in Florence, the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and the institutions of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the City of Florence, the City of Milan and the Fabbrica di San Pietro.

Placed close to each other, the three Pietà will offer the opportunity 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, now old, he put his hand to the Pietà now in Florence and then to the Rondanini Pietà preserved in Milan. A journey of more than fifty years, which leads from the ambition of the young man who carved his name on the chest of the Madonna of the Vatican version, to the personal identification of the elderly artist, who in that of the Museo dell'Opera depicts himself in the guise of Nicodemus.

This autumn, the three plaster casts of the original Pietà will be exhibited in Milan in the Sala delle Cariatidi of Palazzo Reale in a new, specially designed exhibition.