The Ragusa Pietà

History and restoration

This book tells the story of a painting that was recognized as carrying the signature of Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1868 by his greatest expert of the 19th century, Hermann Grimm. After being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1886, attributed to the same painter, the painting then disappeared without trace. In 2010, the panel was brought to the attention of art historians once again, after a careful document research traced its history, from the Italian Renaissance workshop that brought the painting to life in the mid sixteenth century, to the Bishopric of Ragusa in Dalmatia, where it was located at the beginning of the seventeenth century and from there to museums in Berlin and New York. The terrible condition in which the painting was found, however, prevented any formal clarification of identity. For this reason, the small panel was returned to Italy in 2011, for it to be restored under the supervision of the ISCR in Rome, thanks to financial support from the Rome Foundation. At this point, after cleaning, the painting was presented to the Italian public during the exhibition organized in the capital called The Renaissance in Rome. From Michelangelo to Raphael, at the Foundation's museum in Palazzo Sciarra. This book shows the results of the diagnostic tests, the comparisons of styles and techniques, the iconographic studies that allow the documents and the critical matter of the painting to be systematized. In these pages, experts and the fans of Italian Renaissance art will find so much material to enrich and feed the scientific debate about whether the painting truly is by Michelangelo's hand.