Michelangelo’s Pietà. Aurelio Amendola’s Gaze from Naturalism to Abstraction

exhibition catalogue: Firenze, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, 8 September 2022-9 January 2023

The Bandini Pietà, is the tormented creation of a more than seventy-year-old Michelangelo. He had conceived it for his tomb but left it unfinished after attacking the Christ’s left arm and leg, and the Virgin’s hand in a fit of indignant rage over the marble’s poor workability.
Since 2015, the work has been housed in an exclusively dedicated room in the Nuovo Museo, and since 2019 – at the initiative of the Opera del Duomo itself, with the valuable support of the Friends of Florence Foundation – it underwent a thorough cleaning which was completed last June.
Michelangelo’s masterpiece is now celebrated in the shots taken by Aurelio Amendola, who has formed a special relationship with Michelangelo’s art over the years.
The essay by Antonio Natali, the introductory text of the exhibition catalogue, is not only a critical commentary on Amendola’s vivid photographs, but also that interpretation of the contents that are the soul of any work of art.