The  Pietà Rondanini

The last incomplete work by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), the  Pietà is a meditation on death and the salvation of the soul. In this work the sculptor discards the perfection of the human body and its heroic beauty and transforms the dead Christ into an emblem of suffering. The physical arrangement of Mary and Jesus, the mother's head above that of the son, is suggestive of various moments of the life of Christ: the deposition from the cross; the burial and even the resurrection: in the dissolution of Christ's body in the mother's embrace. Left incomplete due to the death of Michelangelo, the Pietà is a testament to the last period of the great master's creative genius.