Florentine Pietà

The Florentine Pietà belongs to those later works by Michelangelo, which were made by the artist without any commission. Probably intended to decorate with it his own tomb, Michelangelo worked on it mostly between 1547 and 1553 and finally he left the sculpture uncompleted. According to contemporary sources the artist may have been unsatisfied because of the imperfections in the material and probably also was displeased with his own work, it is supposed that he even tried to smash it. Finally Michelangelo gave the work to his banker friend Francesco Bandini (ca. 1496 – 1562). Bandini asked Michelangelo’s assistant Tiberio Calcagni (1532–1565) to restore and finish the sculpture. Although Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) intended to use the sculpture on the tomb of Michelangelo in Santa Croce Church in Florence, the work remained in Rome and only between 1652 and 1674 it was ordered to be transferred to Florence by the Grand Duke Cosimo III. The copy was purchased by the Museum in 1906, and the plaster cast was exhibited in the Museum’s Michelangelo Room, placed symmetrically with the copy of Michelangelo’s Roman Pietà. This plaster cast is installed in Kecskemét at the House of Science and Technology since 1976, together with other fourteen plaster casts after Michelangelo’s statues.