'Adamas Mourned by the Nymphs' in Schedel's 'Liber Antiquitatum'

Abstract

Critics usually consider it a psychological finesse of Michelangelo that the quiet and motionless grief of his Madonna in St. Peter's is contrasted with the 'speaking' gesture of her left hand.' Astounding though it may seem, it has never been noticed that the four fingers of this hand are not by the master. This is not only clearly visible in the original, but it is also confirmed by a document, which states that they were made in 1736 by GiuseppeLironi: "2o December 1736. Scudi 9 moneta per tant' importa un suo conto di aver rifatto le quattro dita alla mano sinistra della Maria SS.ma della PietA."2 Engravings and replicas of the group dating from the I6th century make it possible to reconstruct the original position of the fingers.3 They were half-bent and nearer together, forming a spatial unity with the palm so that they were enclosed in the borders of the marble block. This is a gesture of resignation and submission to fate, whereas the hand as it appears to-day with the pointing forefinger has a rhetorical meaning with an appeal to the onlooker. The position and expression of the original hand was very akin to the left hand of Christ in Leonardo's Last Supper. And here we come upon one of the paradoxes of modern art criticism. Justi was the first to call attention to the resemblance of the two hands, and his observation was 'blindly' repeated by a number of other people.4 But what they were commenting upon was not the original hand of the Pieta' but the i8th century restoration. Justi and his fellow critics became victims of too good a knowledge of the High Renaissance : in identifying the hand of the Pieth with that of Leonardo's Christ they unconsciously read into the baroque movement the original self-contained gesture. R.W.