How Michelangelo S Pieta Represents Renaissance Beauty Essay

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Pieta by Michelangelo

Michelangelo's Pieta is a sculpture that was produced during the Renaissance time period in Italy. This was a period of time in which wealth and artistic guilds flourished. Michelangelo was by trade and a talent a sculptor of the utmost precision, as the historian of the time, Giorgio Vasari, has indicated in his Lives of the Artists. Produced in 1498 for a Cardinal in Rome, the sculpture is a combination of naturalistic design and classical dimensions/proportions. Thus, the Madonna and the Christ dead in her lap convey real, human characteristics -- yet the overall shape of the sculpture, the positioning of the Madonna's arms, the tilt of her head, the way in which the Christ lies in her lap, the crook of his knees, the drape of his arm, the folds of her robes -- all of this is detail of a most naturalistic devotion to accuracy and humanistic observation. Thus, this sculpture is considered by some to be the height of Michelangelo's artistic success (Johnson, 2003) and Vasari (2003) acknowledges that Michelangelo had become so famous by this time because of his craftsmanship that the Pope himself wanted Michelangelo to come to work for him. The Pieta is sculpted out of marble and was situated in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where its beauty is enhanced by shafts of light pouring in from the sun. The Madonna's face is dolorous because of the death of her Son but her sorrow cannot hide her youthful beauty which represents the purity of her soul.

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She is the figure that embodies grace and the total submission to the will of the Divine: and this is the meaning of the sculpture -- that she has not allowed that her Son should be sacrificed on the Cross but that she should also be willing to mournfully embrace this sacrifice, represented by the way her arms are stretched out. At the same time, her grief is also depicted in the way her head droops and her eyes close and her left hand is turned upward, palm up, in a gesture that echoes the eternal, "Why?" of all sorrow and pain that people feel. The head of the Christ rolls back over her left arm, which supports the shoulders the Madonna's Son, as her right hand grips his side, below which is the pierced wound where the soldier cut into the flesh….....

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