| Pietà for Vittoria Colonna | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Michelangelo Buonarroti |
| Year | about 1538–1544 |
| Type | Black chalk on cardboard |
| Dimensions | 28.9 cm × 18.9 cm (11.4 in × 7.4 in) |
| Location | Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston |
ThePietà for Vittoria Colonna is a black chalk drawing on cardboard (28.9×18.9 cm) attributed toMichelangelo Buonarroti, dated to about 1538–1544 and kept at theIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum inBoston.[1]
Michelangelo became acquainted withVittoria Colonna around 1538.[2] Their lively friendship gained Michelangelo admission to her social circles, and he became acquainted with issues of church reform. For Colonna, Michelangelo executed several paintings in the fifth decade of the sixteenth century. All of them are now lost or of controversial attribution, but several sketches and copies by students and admirers of Michelangelo have been preserved.
Apart from a famousCrucifixion, Michelangelo's most notable work for Vittoria Colonna is aPietà, of which a remarkable drawing is exhibited at Boston. It is not certain that this work was painted by Michelangelo, but it is described byAscanio Condivi. It has at any rate proved influential: There are several copies by students of lesser skill inFlorence andRome, a reworking byLudovico Buti and an adaptation byLavinia Fontana.[1]
In 2007, the Milanese restaurator and art historianAntonio Forcellino announced that anoil painting of the same subject had been discovered in a private home inRochester, New York. The painting had come to the U.S. in 1883 and had hung over the fireplace of a middle-class family home until the 1970s. In a 2011 book,The Lost Michelangelos, Forcellino expresses the opinion that the painting is Michelangelo's. This attribution is not yet widely shared. According to Kristina Herrmann Fiore, a curator at theBorghese Gallery in Rome, the painting's underdrawing is conceivably by the hand of Michelangelo, whereas Alexander Nagel, a professor atNew York University Institute of Fine Arts believes that the painting is merely a copy of a composition by Michelangelo.[3]
The theme of thePietà, so dear to the sculptor Michelangelo, is addressed in a highly emotional composition, as in theCrucifixion for Colonna. The dead Jesus is cradled between the grieving Mary's legs, who raises her arms to heaven as two angels also raise Christ's arms at right angles. Mary's gesture balances the forceful vertical lines of Jesus' body, which lies on a rock. Above the two stands a beam, the Cross, on which is inscribed, vertically, a quotation byDante:Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa – "There they don't think of how much blood it costs".[1]
In this verse from canto 29 of theParadiso,Beatrice deplores the lack of appreciation for themartyrs' sacrifices. The quote reflects Michelangelo's and Colonna's religious convictions. Both belonged to Roman groups that focused on achieving salvation by faith through prayerful contemplation of sacred history, as does their poetry of this period. "Michelangelo’s gift", according to James M. Saslow, "thus offered consoling testimony to their shared conviction that the savior’s tragic death is also a cause for joy, the climax of God’s divine comedy that offers each believing soul the hope of a happy ending."[1]
