Cultural Assignment #1: The Rondanini Pieta

Our clue for our cultural assignment was “One of the two influential men of the Renaissance began a creative work but he has not finished creating it. The piece is safe in this fortress”. Our first stop on our bus tour yesterday was at Castello Sforzesco. Walking into the castle we saw a sign for the Michelangelo exhibit. We immediately made the connection that Michelangelo was a very influential man in the renaissance era. Upon entering the gift shop, we showed one of the women who worked there our clue. She quickly got excited at the fact that it was a riddle that needed to be solved. She pointed at a bookmark that showed a Michelangelo sculpture that was currently being featured in the museum. She told us that if we go through the museum we would find the exhibit in the last room. When we finally got to the last room of the exhibit we quickly found out that we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the exhibition room. In our broken English we tried to plead with the guide to let us take a picture but she wouldn’t budge. The best we could do was exit the exhibit and take a picture with one the guides and the pamphlet for the sculpture. We also took a picture with our group with one of the posters for the exhibit that was outside the museum.

Posing with the "The Rondanini Pieta"by Michelangelo Panflet because we weren't allowed to take a picture with the sculpture.

Posing with a poster for the exhibit!

The sculpture, The Rondanini Pieta, was started by Michelangelo while he was nearing his ninetieth year of age. The sculpture depicts Christ being held by his mother, Mary. He passed his work onto his servant, Antonio del Francese but the sculpture was never finished. It is evident that in the early stages of the sculpture, Michelangelo began carving Christ leaning much further forward, separate from his mother. He then changed his mind and began carving Christ closer to Mary so that their heads were touching. Evidence of this is seen in the left arm and legs of Christ that have similarly honed surfaces. He also changed his mind to the positioning of Mary’s face, evidence can be seen in the right eye and beginning of a nose on the upper right portion of the existing face.

"The Rondanini Pieta" by Michelangelo

  -Christine Wallace, Brittany Benham, Kim Deignan, Bobbie Pelegano, Quateshia Marigny