The restoration of Michelangelo's
unfinished second of three Pietàs has been completed in
Florence's Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and has exploded the myth
that he took a hammer to it out of anger at its lack of
perfection, instead saying the Renaissance genius abandoned it
due to flaws in the marble.
The great painter and sculptor completed the work, also known as
The Deposition or the Bandini Pietà, between 1547 and 1555, 50
years after his first Pietà which is in St Peter's, his first
true masterpiece.
He intended it for his tomb.
The third and last Pietà, known as the Rondanini Pietà, was
sculpted roughly just before Michelangelo died at the age of 88
in 1564.
A very unfinished work, it is housed in the Castello Sforzesco
in Milan.
Experts in Florence said the restoration of the Bandini Pieta'
had shown "numerous" microfractures in the marble, in particular
in the lower part, which had forced Michelangelo to stop work on
it before it was finished.
They said it was highly unlikely that, according to the
traditional story, he tried to destroy it with a hammer after
seeing it was not up to his conception of the work - unless an
artist who worked on it just after Michelangelo's death, Tiberio
Calcagni, cancelled the marks of the alleged hammer blows.
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