The Madonna della Pietà, informally known as La Pietà, is a marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary at Mount Golgotha representing the "Sixth Sorrow" of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Michelangelo Buonarroti, now in Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is a key work of Italian Renaissance sculpture and often taken as the start of the High Renaissance.
Pietà (Michelangelo)
Pietà (Michelangelo)
The grand pillars of the Chapel of the Holy Choir, where the two cherubic angels were relocated from the Pietà image in 1749. The Marian image was also pontifically crowned by Pius IX (1854) and Pius X (1904), respectively.
A detail view of the statue with damaged arm, nose and eye, May 1972.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
Portrait by Daniele da Volterra, c. 1545
The Madonna of the Stairs (1490–1492), Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble
Pietà, St Peter's Basilica (1498–1499)
David, completed by Michelangelo in 1504, is one of the most renowned works of the Renaissance.