The Rondanini Pietà by Michelangelo

Via del Corso, 518

Palazzo Rondinini

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The Palazzo Rondinini (or Rondanini), in Via del Corso, was built for the Marchese Giuseppe Rondinini by the architects Gabriele Valvassori (1683-1761) and Alessandro Dori (1702-72). It was completed in 1764. 

The Palazzo Rondanini makes a footnote in the annals of art history, for it was once home to one of Michelangelo's sculptures, an image of the Pietà, which the master intended for his own tomb. Now housed in a museum in Milan, it has been known ever since as the Rondanini Pietà. 

Michelangelo never completed the sculpture and was still working on it a few days before his death on February 18th, 1564. How different a work it is to the Pietà he had carved for a chapel in St Peter's Basilica, more than six decades earlier. 

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The Rondanini Pietà by Michelangelo