Florence, Michelangelo's Pieta Bandini restoration ends, with new discoveries

In Florence , the restoration of the Pieta Bandini, a masterpiece by Michelangelo Buonarroti housed in the Duomo Museum , has been completed. The work has been freed of surface deposits that altered its legibility and coloring, and in addition, the restoration has confirmed that the work was made from a defective marble due to the presence of numerous micro-fractures, particularly one on the base, which may have “forced” Michelangelo to abandon the sculpture. Still, the huge block of marble on which it is carved comes from the Medici quarries in Seravezza and not Carrara as believed until now.

Begun in November 2019 and interrupted several times during the Covid pandemic, the restoration was an important opportunity to understand the work’s complex history, the various stages of workmanship, and the sculptural technique used. The goal of the restoration, was to achieve a uniform and balanced reading of the work, re-presenting the image of the Pieta, carved in a single block, as probably originally conceived by Michelangelo. Thanks to the decision to create an “open” restoration site, visitors to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo moreover were able to see the restoration in progress. Exceptionally, for the next 6 months, from September 25, 2021 to March 30, 2022, the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore decided to leave the construction site to allow the public, with guided tours, to see the restored Pieta up close and in a unique way.

The restoration, commissioned and directed by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore thanks to a donation from the nonprofit Friends of Florence Foundation, under the high supervision of the ABAP Superintendency for the Metropolitan City of Florence and the Provinces of Pistoia and Prato, was entrusted to restorer Paola Rosa, who has 30 years of experience on works by great artists of the past including Michelangelo, with the collaboration of Emanuela Peiretti, assisted by a team of professionals inside and outside the Opera. The four figures that make up the work, including the elderly Nicodemus to whom the artist gave his face, are carved in a block of marble, 2 meters and 25 centimeters high, weighing about 2,700 kilograms. Diagnostic investigations led to the discovery that it is a marble from the Seravezza quarries in Versilia and not from Carrara, as believed until now. This was a significant discovery because the Seravezza quarries were owned by the Medici and Giovanni de’ Medici, the future Pope Leo X, had ordered Michelangelo to use the marble for the facade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence and to open a road to transport it to the sea. However, we do not know why this huge block of marble was in Michelangelo’s possession in Rome when he sculpted the Pieta between 1547 and 1555. We do know, however, that Michelangelo was not satisfied with the quality of these marbles because they had unexpected veins and micro-fractures that were difficult to detect from the outside. Thanks to the restoration, it was possible to confirm, for the first time, that the marble used for the Pieta was indeed defective, as Vasari also recounts in the “Lives” describing it as hard, full of impurities and that it “set fire” at every stroke of the chisel. There have, in fact, emerged many small inclusions of pyrite in the marble that when struck with the chisel would certainly have made sparks, but above all the presence of numerous micro-fractures, in particular one on the base that appears both in front and behind, and that suggests that Michelangelo encountering it while carving the left arm of Christ and that of the Virgin, was forced to abandon the work due to the impossibility of continuing the work. This is a more credible hypothesis than that of a Michelangelo who, by now elderly, unhappy with the result, attempted in a moment of discouragement to destroy the sculpture with hammers, and of which the restoration has not detected any trace, unless Tiberio Calcagni erased the marks.

According to the Opera del Duomo of Florence, this one that has just been completed can be considered the first restoration of the Florentine Pieta, as the sources do not report any particular interventions that took place in the past, other than the one carried out shortly after its creation by Tiberio Calcagni, a Florentine sculptor close to Michelangelo, by 1565. Over the course of its more than 470 years of life, during the numerous changes of ownership and traumatic historical events, the Pieta has undergone various maintenance interventions, but these are not documented because they are considered simple routine operations. The restoration preceded by an extensive diagnostic campaign provided information that was fundamental to the knowledge of the work and the subsequent intervention. No historical patinas were present on Michelangelo’s Pieta, with the exception of a few traces found on the base of the sculpture. Many, however, were surface deposits, starting with the presence of high amounts of plaster, residues of the cast made in 1882, which had left a conspicuous whiteness and excessive dryness on the surfaces. To remedy this unpleasant effect, waxes had been applied over the plaster residues repeatedly and over time. The natural aging process of the waxes, mixed with dust deposits, especially on the folds of the robes and the reliefs of the modeling, in obvious contrast to the undercuts that remained lighter, made the surface amber and chromatically unbalanced. Based on these results, it was decided to proceed first with cleaning tests, so as to identify the most suitable methodology, and then to begin the intervention from the back, where the presence of deposits was greatest, using cotton swabs soaked in deionized water, slightly heated. A noninvasive, gradual and controlled method. For the waxes present on the surface of the sculptural group, whether in a diffuse or punctiform manner (drips due to the drippings from the candles placed on the high altar of the Cathedral of Florence, on the back of which the work was placed for 220 years), it was decided to assist, in the most complex cases, water cleaning with the use of scalpels.

The Pieta in the Opera del Duomo in Florence, charged with experience and suffering, is one of three created by the great artist. Unlike the other two, the early Vatican one and the Rondanini (Michelangelo’s last work) the body of Christ is supported not only by Mary but also by Magdalene and the elderly Nicodemus, to whom Michelangelo gave his own face. This detail is also confirmed by two biographers coeval with the artist, Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi, thanks to whom we also know that the sculpture was intended for an altar in a Roman church, at whose feet the artist would have liked to be buried. Michelangelo sculpted the Pietà of the Opera del Duomo known as the Bandini Pietà between 1547 and 1555, when he was about seventy-five years old. Michelangelo did not finish the sculpture and gave it to his servant Antonio da Casteldurante, who, after having it restored by Tiberio Calcagni, sold it to the banker Francesco Bandini for 200 scudi, who placed it in the garden of his Roman villa in Montecavallo. In 1649, Bandini’s heirs sold it to Cardinal Luigi Capponi, who took it to his palace at Montecitorio in Rome and four years later to the Palazzo Rusticucci Accoramboni. On July 25, 1671, Cardinal Capponi’s great-grandson Piero sold it to Cosimo III de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through the mediation of Paolo Falconieri, a gentleman at the Florentine court. After three years of further residence in Rome, due to difficulties in transporting it, in 1674 the Pietà is embarked in Civitavecchia, reaches Livorno, and from there, along the Arno River, arrives in Florence, where it is placed in the basement of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. It remained there until 1722, when Cosimo III had it placed at the back of the high altar of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. In 1933, the sculptural group was moved to the Chapel of St. Andrew to make it more easily visible. From 1942 to 1945, to protect it from the war, the Pieta is sheltered in the Cathedral. In 1949, the work returned to the Chapel of St. Andrew in the Cathedral, where it remained until 1981, when it was moved to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. The decision to move it to the Museum was motivated by the need not to disturb worship due to the large number of tourists and for security reasons (in 1972 the Vatican Pietà had been vandalized). Since the end of 2015, in the new Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the Pieta has been placed in the center of the room titled Michelangelo’s Tribune, on a plinth that evokes the altar for which it was intended.

Florence, Michelangelo's Pieta Bandini restoration ends, with new discoveries

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