In restoring the sculpture, researchers discovered insights into the artist’s process.
Following a two-year restoration effort, a haunting sculpture Michelangelo made for his own tomb is once more on public display in Italy.
A Pietà carved from a single block of marble, the artwork shows Jesus’s dead body propped up by the Virgin Mary and St. Mary Magdalene, while the pharisee Nicodemus, whose face was modeled after Michelangelo’s own, looms above. Though technically unfinished by the artist, the piece has long held a special allure for its associations with the artist’s death.
