Model for a River God

In the Pietà, Michelangelo approached a subject which until then had been given form mostly north of the Alps, where the portrayal of pain had always been connected with the idea of redemption: it was called the “Vesperbild” and represented the seated Madonna holding Christ’s body in her arms. But now the twenty-three-year-old artist presents us with an image of the Madonna with Christ’s body never attempted before. Her face is youthful, yet beyond time; her head leans only slightly over the lifeless body of her son lying in her lap.

Michelangelo’s last sculptures were two pietàs (or three assuming the Palestrina Pietà is his work). This one — known variously as “The Deposition,” “the Florence Pietà,” “the Bandini Pietà” and “The Lamentation over the Dead Christ” — depicts four figures: the dead body of Jesus Christ, newly taken down from the Cross, Nicodemus (or possibly Joseph of Arimathea), Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary. According to Vasari, Michelangelo made it to decorate his tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.