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“… Under the sun, there's not a thing that's transient Not overcome by death and changed by fortune.”
The Pietà Rondanini by Michelangelo Buonarroti is a group hewn out of white marble and stands 6 feet 35/8; inches high.
It is here illustrated by three plates, reprinted from original photographs taken by Dr. Richard Frank in July 1964 in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.* Views similar to plates one and two have been published by Charles de Tolnay (23) and by Ludwig Goldscheider (11). The view shown on plate three has, to my knowledge, never been published before. However, it is accessible to any visitor to the museum.
This Pietà was executed in roughly two stages. The remaining parts of the first version stand out by the more careful modulation and the high polish. One is immediately struck by the beautifully finished right arm, carefully severed above the elbow and separated from the rest of the group except for a structural device. A prominent vein inside of the elbow pulsates with life (Plate one).
We find the only clue to the first planned version on a sheet of five drawings, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (23). I refer to the drawing on the extreme right of the sheet. Here, Mary supports her son by holding him up with her hands under his arms, with the upper half of his body