Curator’s inspection
Pietà

Move across the painting — or drag on touch — to study brushwork and craquelure through the curator’s loupe.

Pietà

Mary holds her dead Son across her lap, serene and impossibly young, carved by a sculptor of twenty-four.

The only work Michelangelo ever signed — on the sash across Mary's breast.

Her youthfulness was defended by Michelangelo as a sign of her purity.

Damaged by a hammer attack in 1972; it has since stood behind glass.

Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work; reproduction licence as listed at source.