The Signature

It can be said that Michelangelo’s signature on the St Peter’s Pietà (executed 1498–1499/1500) is no less extraordinary and meaningful than the sculpture itself [Figs 1–3].1 The two compo-nents of the work, sculpture and inscription, move from the past to the future pari-passu, and I believe the innovations they bring in both domains are profoundly interrelated. My purpose in this paper is to reconsider Michelangelo’s work in what I believe to be a new light, which may also illuminate what I should call the inner relationship between Michelangelo’s words and image. MICHAEL • A[N]GELUS • BONAROTUS • FLORENT[INUS] • FACIEBA[T] The innovations and peculiarities of Michelangelo’s signa-ture, the only time he inscribed his name on a public work, have often been noted and discussed.2 The text is in Latin and in a for-mula sanctioned by the venerable masters of antiquity, as re-ported by Pliny in the preface to his own work on Natural History: I should like to be accepted on the lines of those founders of paint-ing and sculpture who, as you will fi nd in these volumes, used to inscribe their fi nished works, even the masterpieces which we can never tire of admiring, with a provisional title such as Apelle