«The most moving sculpture ever created by an artist.» (Henry Moore)
The Rodanini Pietà is a marble work that Michelangelo sculpted for the first time between 1552 and 1553 and then worked on it again between 1555 and 1564, probably until a few days before his death, leaving it incomplete.
Kept until 2015 inside the Sforza Castle Museum in Milan, it was then moved and can now be admired inside the ancient Spanish Hospital in the Castle’s Cortile delle Armi, in a room designed by architect Michele De Lucchi.
During Salone del Mobile 2025, this masterpiece that is considered to be the most iconic work of marble sculpture not only of the Renaissance period but probably of all time, returned in all its surprising relevance to be the main character of the ‘pièce’ Mother by Bob Wilson (Texas, 1941), the American architect and experimental artist considered worldwide as an authentic representative of a visionary avant-garde and credited as a ‘master of light’ (cit. New York Times).
‘Mother’ is an installation through which Bob Wilson makes light, music and matter dialogue with each other: using the ‘Stabat Mater’ by the Estonian Arvo Pärt, Wilson plays with an archetypal and salvific light in a sequence lasting about 30 minutes with the purpose of representing the drama and the extraordinary nature of Christ’s death, putting emphasis on the human and universal pain of the Mother who supports the body of her lifeless Son.
The audience is immersed in deep darkness and totally absorbed by the work and music, and therefore it is projected into a dimension other than our usual one, in an experience that is all-encompassing and that, we could say, is close to the sublime.
The sublime of the unfinished: initially Michelangelo, working on the form of rough marble, purifies the block of every imperfection and, although unfinished, delivers it to us as testimony of the great work of catharsis that, in this creative act, he had carried out on himself.
Bob Wilson on the vertical composition of the Pietà, already very innovative at the time Michelangelo sculpted it, puts in place a further chiseling work through light. The focus remains what Michelangelo originally thought of: the relationship between mother and son. The light now adds emotional tension to this rough stone work in which the body of the son merges with that of the mother, united in a tender and painful hug that shows a completely spiritualized pain.
In Wilson’s installation, the sublime that the Pietà Rondanini evokes in the audience comes to us from the narrative drama that the lights, conceived by the Texan artist and projected onto the sculpture, recreate, emphasizing that sense of humanity that originally inspired it. It is not sublime just because wonderful: certainly this too, but beyond the aesthetic judgment, this unfinished work in its immense materiality and expressiveness moves within us a truly strong emotion that unites us in the deepest understanding of man and his pain. As usual, this time as well, we can only thank Robert Wilson for giving us a space that allows us to get lost in our own thoughts and emotions.”
