Michelangelo’s Florence Pietà by Jack Wasserman with contributions by Franca Trinchieri Camiz, Timothy Verdon, and Peter Rockwell; technical studies by ENEA, Opificio delle Pietre Dure, and IBM. Published by Princeton University Press, £52/$75, ISBN 0691016216 Reviewed by Michael Brooks
WHY would Michelangelo smash up the Florence Pietà before he had even finished it? Did he encode his support for Protestantism in the sculpture and then lose courage when the Pope started threatening heretics? Or was Michelangelo simply frustrated by a difficult block of marble?
It took a team of scientists wielding deadly gamma rays, some imaging equipment constructed for the…
