Curated by Antonio Mazzotta and Claudio Salsi in collaboration with Agostino Allegri and Giovanna Mori

Hosted in the halls of the Antico Ospedale Spagnolo in the Sforza Castle of Milan, the exhibition Vesperbild. At the origins of Michelangelo's Pietà aims to illustrate the Italian fortune of the theme of the Vesperbild (image of the vesper), which in Italy is known as Pietà.
The exhibition retraces the different stages and developments of this iconography starting from the early northern examples up to the classicizing interpretation provided by Michelangelo in the Vatican Pietà (of which a cast will be present in the exhibition) and destined to influence the perception of the theme in the centuries to come.

The presence of Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà in the Museum dedicated to her, adjacent to the exhibition, emphasizes the theme of return to the origins: with this work, one witnesses the master's will to return, towards the end of his life, to the expressiveness of the oldest forms of the Vesperbild.

The exhibition presents a collection of twenty-four works of art, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, engravings, and miniatures, coming from important international institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt; as well as from significant Italian and Milanese institutions such as the Biblioteca Trivulziana and the Museo Poldi Pezzoli.

There are works by great Italian artists such as Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole de' Roberti, Giovanni Bellini, Perugino, and, for the first time, Vittore Carpaccio's Pietà, currently in a private collection, is exhibited to the public.

The exhibition path, designed by Andrea Perin, is divided into three sections and aims to narrate the history of the Vesperbild through almost two centuries, from the wooden sculptures of the Rhine Valley at the beginning of the 14th century to Michelangelo's Vatican Pietà (1497-1499): an interpretation of the Vesperbild capable of decisively marking the future variations of the iconographic theme, to which future generations will refer absolutely, in characteristics and features.