List of figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Opening Act: Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà
Cardinal Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas and the Commission
Envisioning the Pietà
The Finished Sculpture (and Some Lingering Questions)
Encountering the Pietà
Experiencing the Pietà
The Madonna della Febbre
The Peripatetic Pietà: From Santa Petronilla to the Secretarium
Chapter 2. Canonicity and its Discontents: Artistic Progeny of the Pietà during the Sixteenth Century
A Pietà for Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome
Intermezzo: Florentine Rebellion
A Pietà for Santo Spirito in Florence
An Anonymous Critic and a Madrigal
A Pietà for the King of France
A Pietà for Everyone: Reproductive Prints
Canonicity and its Discontents
Chapter 3. Restaging the Pietà in the Late Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Marian Devotion and Imagery in Tridentine Rome
The Pietà and the Canons’ Choir (1568-1609)
On the Road Again (1609-1625)
Early Seventeenth Century Posthumous Bronze Copies of the Pietà in Italy and Spain
The New Canons’ Choir (1625-1750)
Coronation
Chapter 4. Shifting Perspectives: Michelangelo and the Pietà from the Mid- Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries
The Pietà and the Grand Tour
Robert Samber’s Roma Illustrata (1722)
Mid-Century: The Pietà takes Center Stage
The Late Eighteenth-Early Nineteenth Centuries: Revolution, Romanticism, and Michelangelo
Entre’acte: Napoleon and the Looting of Rome
The Mid-Nineteenth Century: Nationalism and the Art of Michelangelo
The Great Exhibition of 1851
Michelangelo’s Florentine Birthday Bash of 1875
Chapter 5. The Pietà on the American Stage: The Twentieth Century
A Question of Authenticity
Marble Pietàs in Early Twentieth Century America: Icons of Faith, Beauty, and Identity
The Pietà and Popular Devotion: Our Lady of Sorrows
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis: The Pietà at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale
Lost-Wax Bronze Casts of the Pietà: Icons of Faith, Beauty, and Commerce
The Pietà and American Consumer Capitalism
Only the Original Will Do: The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair
Staging the Pietà in the Vatican Pavilion
Critical Reception
Souvenirs, Body Doubles, and Effigies
Plot Twist: An Iconoclastic Attack (1972)
Chapter 6. Coda: The Pietà on the Global Stage
Something Borrowed: Recasting Casts
Fragmentation, Proselytization, and Commodification
Something New: Contemporary Artists and the Vatican Pietà
Artistic Appropriation: The Sacred and the Profane
The Vatican Pietà as a Symbol of Social Justice
Performance, Empathy, and Memory: Seeing the Pietà Afresh
Bibliography
Biography
Lisa M. Rafanelli is Professor of Art History at Manhattanville College.
