Pieta for Vittoria Colonna

The model design for this engraving (now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston) was made for Vittoria Colonna, who gave it its name. The beam of the cross is inscribed with an Italian quote from Dante’s Divine Comedy: „There they don’t think of how much blood it costs.“ Vittoria Colonna was a highly pious woman and a member of the reformationist movement from the circle around the cardinals Reginald Pole and Gaspar Contarini. A profound spiritual, intellectual and human bond bound her with Michelangelo.