The Deposition

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475-1564)
The Deposition (“The Florentine Pietà”)(c. 1550)
Marble sculpture, 226 cm. high
Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence

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. After smashing the sculpture, he gave it to his servant Antonio. Later the servant sold the work and the new owner had it reconstructed by Tiberio Calcagni following Michelangelo’s models. The face of Nicodemus under the hood is considered to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo himself. Additionally, the female figure at left was finished by sculptor Tiberio Calcagni. Cacagni was assigned the job after Michelangelo abandoned the sculpture after eight years of tireless work upon discovering an impurity in the marble that had gone undiscovered until that point.

Michelangelo, in this Pietà, did not portray any precise historical moment; instead he erected a personal admonishment to himself, “One does not think how much blood it costs.” He had once written this line from the Divine Comedy on a drawing for a Pietà, and from the composition of this drawing he took this marble group. Nicodemus has taken the place of the Madonna and she, with Mary Magdalen now does what the angels did, supports the body. There is no longer only the mother, but three people are now surrounding the body, and Christ’s deadness is expressed more effectively by the falling movement in which he is caught halfway. The figures are not isolated from the emaciated dead body: they are blended, in their fear, desperation and pain, into a single setting. The bodies are denied any independent power and there is nothing to point to a higher meaning of this suffering, such as redemption.