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Holy Work: Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’, by Brad Miner – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

Holy Work: Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’, by Brad Miner

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Pietà (1498–1499), by Michaelangelo. St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. ... This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. ... You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work ...

By Brad Miner, The Catholic Thing, March 30, 2026

Brad Miner, husband and father, is Senior Editor of The Catholic Thing and a Senior Fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review, and had a long career in the book publishing industry. His most recent book is, Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin. …

“The sculptor arrives at his end by taking away what is superfluous.”
– Michelangelo to Benedetto Varchi, 1549

The greatest artist of the Renaissance is famous for something he may never have said: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” There are other versions of the quotation, as in the epigraph above, that are genuine, and they may seem to suggest that Michelangelo believed he merely liberated a form trapped in stone.

Anyone who has visited the Accademia in Florence will appreciate the idea, because resident in the Hall of Prisoners there are Michelangelo’s “slaves” – unfinished sculptures intended for the never-constructed tomb of Pope Julius II. The figures do seem to be struggling to escape: …

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