The ''Rondanini Pietà'' is a

marble sculpture Marble has been the preferred material for stone monumental sculpture since ancient times, with several advantages over its more common geological "parent" limestone, in particular the ability to absorb light a small distance into the surface be ...

that

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

worked on from 1552 until the last days of his life, in 1564. Several sources indicate that there were actually three versions, with this one being the last. The name Rondanini refers to the fact that the sculpture stood for centuries in the courtyard at the in Rome. Certain sources point out that biographer Giorgio Vasari had referred to this Pietà in 1550, suggesting that the first version may already have been underway at that time. The work is now in the Museum of Rondanini Pietà at Sforza Castle in Milan. This final sculpture revisited the theme of the Virgin Mary mourning over the emaciated body of the dead Christ, which he had first explored in his '' Pietà'' of 1499. Like his late series of drawings of the Crucifixion and the sculpture of the

Deposition of Christ The Descent from the Cross ( el, Ἀποκαθήλωσις, ''Apokathelosis''), or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after hi ...

intended for his own tomb, it was produced at a time when Michelangelo's sense of his own mortality was growing. He had worked on the sculpture all day, just six days before his death. The ''Rondanini Pietà'' was begun before The Deposition of Christ was completed in 1555. In his dying days, Michelangelo hacked at the marble block until only the dismembered right arm of Christ survived from the sculpture as originally conceived. The elongated Virgin and Christ are a departure from the idealised figures that exemplified the sculptor's earlier style, and have been said to bear more of a resemblance to the attenuated figures of

Gothic sculpture Gothic sculpture was a sculpture style that flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages, from about mid-12th century to the 16th century,The chronology of the period varies significantly according to the source consulted evolving from Romanesque ar ...

than those of the Renaissance. Some also suggest that the elongated figures are reminiscent of the style used in

Mannerism Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...

. The unfinished quality of the work fits with Michelangelo's late progress away from naturalism and humanism and toward a mystical Neoplatonism, in which he conceived of a sculpture as latent in the marble and requiring merely the removal of superfluous material; in this manner, he seems to have deprived his human symbols of corporeal quality in an attempt to convey directly a purely spiritual idea. It has also been suggested that the sculpture should not be considered unfinished, but a work in a continuous process of being made visible by the viewer as he or she moves around to see it from multiple angles. South African visual artist

Marlene Dumas Marlene Dumas (born 3 August 1953) is a South African artist and painter currently based in the Netherlands. Life and work Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Kuils River in the Western Cape, where her father had ...

based her 2012 painting ''Homage to Michelangelo'' on the ''Rondanini Pietà''.

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* Sculptures by Michelangelo 16th-century sculptures Marble sculptures in Italy 1564 works Sforza Castle Sculptures of the Pietà Unfinished sculptures {{Italy-sculpture-stub

See also

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