Opera del Duomo Museum
Piazza Duomo, 9
Open every day: Monday to Saturday from 9.00 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., Sundays from 9.00 a.m. to 1.40 p.m.
Ticket Euros 6,00

This museum is just one of the activities of the Opera del Duomo foundation, a centuries old organization managing every aspect of the Cathedral and of the other religious monuments of the square. The courtyard of the museum is the place where Michelangelo sculpted the David. The larger part of the works of art exposed here comes from the outdoor decoration of the buildings, moved here to keep them safe indoor.
The purpose of our visit is in the landing of the stairs: the Michelangelo’s “Florence” Pieta of 1557. It is a work coming from Rome, where he sculpted it in his very old age, one of the latest works of him. At that moment of his life Michelangelo was extremely rich and famous but he used to keep living in poverty in a small house in the centre of Rome, due to his high sense of religious modesty and simplicity. He created his last works to adorn his sepulchre and always chose the subject of the pieta, that is the Virgin receiving the death Christ from the cross, one of the most dramatic passages of the entire Bible, when everything seems lost forever and the joy of resurrection is still unknown. At 20 years old he had already realized another pieta, the famous one of St. Peter’s Church in Vatican, but the young man focussed especially on the beauty of the figures, demonstrating his extremely talented skills to represent it. The elder man had a deeper sense of religion as he feels closer the end of his life and transferred his suffering to his works, marking their psychological and tragic traits.
Nicodemus, on the top, is probably a self-portrait, and the Magdalene, at left, is an extra figure added by Tito Calcagni: it is clearly different from the rest of the block for dimension, style and grain.

Michelangelo was always unsatisfied with  his latest works and in this case he broke the sculpture into several pieces to destroy it but luckily his servant saved the work, collecting the portions and lately selling them to a local lord to make them restore by the sculptor Calcagni. Michelangelo repented of his act of rage against the sculpture and he suggested how to fix the statue, but he turned a blind eye to the poor workmanship of the last figure addition. The sculpture was lately moved to the Florence Cathedral, where it was displayed up to the 1960s, when it was placed inside the museum. We can still see the traces of the breaks on the body of the Christ.

The Pieta of Palestrina, we admired inside the Accademia Museum, belongs to the same period of the life of the artist. A third pieta of the eldest age is the Pieta Rondanini, which is in the Sforza Castle Museums in Milan. Lately we will visit the tomb of Michelangelo in Santa Croce, realized by Giorgio Vasari, without using any of these pietas.