As part of the Fabbrica di San Pietro’s work for the Jubilee, the stained-glass window in the Chapel housing Michelangelo’s Pieta was replaced. The previous window had been made in 1973 to protect the work that had been damaged by a man’s hammer blows on May 21, 1972. The new protection, underlines the statement from the Fabbrica di San Pietro, consists of a diaphragm with a high-tech anchoring system, made up of nine pieces of shatterproof and bulletproof glass, of the highest quality and maximum transparency, designed by a team of Italian experts after in-depth studies. The replacement works lasted just under six months and were intended to restore the Marian icon to the devotion of pilgrims and visitors, whose security system was also improved. With the work removed, the sculptural group is once again visible in all its splendour.
«In today’s extremely delicate global geopolitical context – said Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of the Basilica and president of the Fabrica di San Pietro – the faithful are given back the opportunity to contemplate the Mother who offers humanity the Son of God, taken down from the Cross and alive by the power of the Resurrection. The offering of the Virgin opens the way to the reconciliation of hearts and to the construction of paths of fraternity and peace».
The intervention
The intervention to replace the stained-glass window, fifty years after its installation, had become necessary for aesthetic reasons – linked to the natural opacification of the material – but also for static reasons. «The project involved not only using more transparent sheets, but also mechanically more efficient ones», explains engineer Alberto Capitanucci, head of the technical department at Fabbrica di San Pietro. The thickness chosen is 24.5 millimeters, compared to 19 in the original installation (11 millimeters for the upper part). The sheets are not simply laminated, but also thermoses. The resistance to manual attacks is up to 26 hammer/axe blows (a value close to P6B according to EN 356) and the resistance to bullets exceeds BR2/S level (EN 1063), i.e. it is able to withstand attacks from 9mm calibre pistols. Overall, the glazing, understood as the set of glass and the structural steel elements that comprise it, with an area of approximately 50 square meters and a total weight of 3,400 kilograms, has been designed to withstand with more than ample safety margins the main environmental actions, such as pressures and depressions acting on the entire surface, earthquakes and the push of the crowd on the parapet. The intervention combines greater visibility with greater safety.
Support
The project was conceived, carried out and supported thanks to donations from a group of Piedmontese businessmen and professionals. Among them, Banca Sella – Sanlorenzo Spa, Brenntag Spa and Inalpi Spa, Costruzioni Generali Gilardi Spa and MdM Srl – Studio Miroglio and Lupica architetti associati, Romoli Venturi & partners, in collaboration with Oxlip, Sagep Editori, Magon Sistemi Spa, Mollo Noleggio and sponsored by Confindustria Piemonte.
New light
Light is the element on which this intervention is based. The sculptural group of the Pietà and the entire chapel have been equipped with a new and modern lighting system, completely renovated with cutting-edge technologies and components. It is once again the Italian company iGuzzini, which already in 2017 proposed and built the system to date, which has donated the lighting bodies, with a non-invasive design, installed after careful studies of lighting spaces and environments.
Other interventions
Thanks to the scaffolding erected for the installation of the large stained-glass window, the Fabbrica di San Pietro was able to carry out a series of consolidation and restoration works on the frescoes surfaces of the Chapel of the Pietà (one of the very few in the Basilica), a work by the painter Giovanni Lanfranco carried out between 1629 and 1632. The grooved stained-glass window at the back of the same chapel was also secured.
The Chapel of Mercy
The exaltation of the Cross and its saving power is the central motif of the entire decorative cycle of the Chapel of Mercy, dedicated until the mid-18th century to the Crucifix, since a wooden crucifix was kept here, currently located in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. In the vault, you can admire the only frescoes in the Vatican Basilica. They were executed by Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647) between 1629 and 1632. The entire vault is decorated with episodes of the Passion of Christ, with the exaltation of the Holy Cross in the center, amidst a whirlwind of angels; the central representation is flanked by pictorial panels with episodes of the Passion of Christ, depicted with vivid realism.
Michelangelo’s Pietà
The marble group of the Mother of Sorrows, who in her chaste youth holds her dead Son pitifully on her lap, was sculpted by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1498-99, at the age of twenty-three, for the tomb of Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas, which at that time was in the chapel of St. Petronilla, next to the old basilica. The band running down from the Virgin’s shoulder reads: “michael āgelvs bonarotvs florent facieba” (Florentine Michelangelo Bonarroti): the only work signed by the artist.
On December 3, 1749, the statue was placed in front of a marble crucifix on the altar of this chapel, where it has always remained exposed to the devotion of the faithful, except for a few months in 1964-1965, when – a unique and unrepeatable event – it crossed the ocean on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition in New York. On May 21, 1972, after the senseless attack that damaged the left arm and face of the Virgin, the statue, skillfully restored, was protected by the large stained-glass window, now replaced.
