he Rondanini Pieta is found in the Sforzesco Palace in Milan. It is the most poignant and incomplete work of the sculptor. It is the last work he undertook at the age of 89 some days before his death. ichelangelo began work on it 12 years earlier, about 1552 and then abandoned it. When he recommenced in 1563, he broke the first body of Christ - of this first version, only an arm remains still attached to the main block - to carve it out again in a sublime intuition, in the body of the Blessed Virgin, as if this was giving him rebirth for his spiritual death. rom this moving fusion of the Mother and Son, we can no longer distinguish who carries the other.
he Rondanini Pieta strikes us with the boldness of its conception as well as its total breaking away from apparently perfect Renaissance form of Rome : with more than half a century between them and the two extremes of the artists recall and complement each other. etween them there is movement from the obvious serenity of the first to the pathetic deprivation of the other, it shows, as well, with an exceptional density, the curve of life, the shock course of an extraordinary genius, both by the man of deep faith and the visionary artist, radically carving and transforming.