Focus on Pietà (Michelangelo) and explore the abstract.
The Madonna della Pietà (Italian: [pjeˈta]; 1498–1499), informally known as La Pietà, is a marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary at Mount Golgotha representing the "Sixth Sorrow" of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Michelangelo Buonarroti, now in Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.  It is a key work of Italian Renaissance sculpture and often taken as the start of the High Renaissance.  
The sculpture captures the moment when Jesus, taken down from the cross, is given to his mother Mary. Mary looks younger than Jesus; art historians believe Michelangelo was inspired by a passage in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy:  "O virgin mother, daughter of your Son...your merit so ennobled human nature that its divine Creator did not hesitate to become your creature" (Paradiso, Canto XXXIII). Michelangelo's aesthetic interpretation of the Pietà is unprecedented in Italian sculpture because it balances the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with naturalism.
The statue was originally commissioned by a French cardinal, Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, then French ambassador in Rome. The  Carrara marble sculpture was made for the cardinal's funeral monument, but was moved to its current location, the first chapel on the north side after the entrance of the basilica, in the 18th century. It is the only piece Michelangelo ever signed.  
The statue was restored after the figure of Mary was vandalized on Pentecost Sunday of 1972 by a mentally disturbed man; it is now protected by a bulletproof glass screen.
Jesus Mary Renaissance Pietà Pentecost Pentecost Sunday aesthetic interpretation Saint Peter's Basilica Divine Comedy signed funeral monument chapel Mount Golgotha Michelangelo Buonarroti classical beauty Golgotha Dante Alighieri naturalism High Renaissance Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas Italian Renaissance sculpture Carrara marble Michelangelo Dante French ambassador in Rome Blessed Virgin Mary Vatican City cardinal