Di fronte (e intorno) a Michelangelo. La Pietà Rondanini 1999

In 1999, the Direzione Centrale Cultura e Musei of the Commune of Milan invited five internationally renowned architects to propose new ideas for the celebrated display of the Pietà Rondanini, originally designed by the BBPR in the 1950s in the Sala degli Scarlioni at the Sforza Castle. The refined postwar solution, characterized by an atmosphere of rarefied metaphysical suspension, had gradually been compromised over subsequent years due to the addition of display cases and railings. Moreover, the changing nature of late-20th-century visitors prompted the Municipality to consider a new arrangement for Michelangelo's final sculpture. Based on largely unpublished drawings and previously unexamined interviews with the architects, the essay analyzes the projects developed during the "Michelangelo Workshop" by Gabetti and Isola, Hans Hollein, Enric Miralles, Umberto Riva, and Álvaro Siza. It reflects on the ways an architect can engage with a masterpiece like the Pietà Rondanini and its BBPR display, which is universally regarded as a cornerstone of Italian postwar museography. By examining in detail a little-known episode in the history of the Pietà Rondanini, the essay provides an original contribution to the understanding of museography at the end of the 20th century and paves the way for new considerations regarding the current museographic display (2015) of the famous Michelangelo's statue.