Michelangelo's Pietà, and what to look for behind the glass

If I had ten minutes in the whole of St Peter’s, I’d spend them here. The Pietà is in the first chapel on the right as you come in, and most visitors catch it out of the corner of their eye on the way to the nave. This page is for looking at it properly, knowing what’s behind the glass and why it looks better now than it did two years ago.

Twenty-three, nine months, one block of marble

The Fabbrica di San Pietro dates the sculpture to 1498. Michelangelo was 23 and carved it for the French cardinal Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas, who wanted it for his tomb in a chapel of the old basilica that no longer exists. The contract asked for a clothed Virgin with the dead Christ in her arms, life-size, and he cut it from a single block of Carrara marble in only nine months.

The reaction explains the fame. Vasari wrote that it was a miracle a shapeless stone could reach such perfection, and Benedetto Varchi, at Michelangelo’s funeral, said it didn’t look made by a mortal hand. Since 3 December 1749 it has stood on the altar of its present chapel, in front of a marble crucifix, and it has left just once, for a few months in 1964-1965, for the New York World’s Fair.

Why is it the only work Michelangelo signed?

Because he chose to. Along the sash across the Virgin’s chest runs MICHAEL ĀGELVS BONAROTVS FLORENT FACIEBA, Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence made this. He never did it again, and Vasari puts it down to the young sculptor being thoroughly pleased with himself. I like to think someone that young needed the world to know who had made it, and it strikes me as a very human gesture from a man later treated almost as a god.

When you look at it, find that sash first. From the rail you have to hunt a little, but it’s there, and it changes how you see the rest.

What to look at closely

The Virgin is younger than her son, and it isn’t a slip. The Fabbrica says it’s because she is immaculate and without sin, and it recalls Dante, who calls her mother and daughter of her own son. Her right hand is veiled by a fold of cloth and barely dares to touch the body. The left, on the other hand, opens out towards you, and the Fabbrica reads it as an invitation to contemplate.

Christ’s body isn’t a conventional crucified figure either. There are no marks of the scourging or the crown of thorns, and the nail holes and the wound in his side are little more than symbols. He looks asleep rather than dead, as if the Resurrection were already inside him. Set this calm against the violence of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, painted more than forty years later, and you’re looking at two very different Michelangelos.

Before you leave, look up. The chapel vault holds the only frescoes in the whole basilica, painted by Giovanni Lanfranco between 1629 and 1632, with the Exaltation of the Cross and scenes from the Passion. Until the mid-eighteenth century this was the Chapel of the Crucifix.

The 1972 hammer and the 2024 glass

On 21 May 1972 a man struck the sculpture with a hammer, damaging the Virgin’s left arm and face. It was restored, and in 1973 the large glass screen went up that kept the public at a distance for half a century. Over time it clouded, and there were structural concerns too.

In November 2024, as part of the Jubilee works, the Fabbrica replaced it. There are now nine shatterproof, bulletproof panes 24.5 mm thick, against 19 mm before, able to take up to 26 blows from a hammer or axe and pistol fire. The glass-and-steel screen weighs 3,400 kilos, covers about 50 square metres and took just under six months to install. A group of businesses from Piedmont paid for it, and the new lighting was donated by iGuzzini, who had lit the chapel in 2017. In my view the difference shows, and the sculpture now reads with a clarity that photos from a few years ago simply don’t have.

Fitting it into your visit

There’s no separate ticket for the Pietà. It sits inside St Peter’s Basilica, free from 07:00 to 20:00, once you’ve cleared security in the right-hand colonnade. Photos without flash are fine, but cover shoulders and knees, and check the Vatican dress code if you’re unsure what counts.

My order would be this. In soon after seven, straight to the Pietà before a crowd gathers, then on down the nave to Bernini’s baldachin over the apostle’s tomb. On your way out, stop in the portico at the Holy Door of St Peter’s, which sits close to this chapel and has been shut since January 2026.