Pietà (statue)
Michelangelo’s Pietà is one of the great surprises inside St Peter’s Basilica: a single block of Carrara marble, carved around 1498 to 1499, that turns grief into something almost unbearably calm. You see the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ, and Michelangelo, still in his mid-twenties, made her unusually young for the scene, which gives the whole work that quiet, timeless feeling. It’s also the only sculpture he ever signed, and he did that across Mary’s sash after hearing the piece was being credited to someone else. The Pietà has had a harder modern life, too. In 1972, it was attacked by László Tóth, a Hungarian geologist, and later protected behind glass. That protection has become part of its story here in Vatican City, where the sculpture now draws the same kind of reverence it earned in the late 15th century. …
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