The St. Peter’s Pietà: A Madonna and Child? An Anatomical and Psychological Reevaluation

Corporeally, conceptually and chronologically, Michelangelo’s marble at St. Peter’s in Rome is not a true Pietà—the dead Christ on the lap of his grieving mother—but a Madonna and Child. The Christ represented in this marble is alive, showing the characteristics of a living child slumbering in his mother’s lap. This work dates from Michelangelo’s ‘Madonna period’ during which he was resolving deep-seated feelings resulting from the loss of maternal love at an early age. His first true Pietas were not executed until some 40 years later.