sculpture, the youthful Mary is shown seated majestically, holding the dead Christ across her lap. It is "...graceful and innocent. Mary and Christ look young and unscarred by the tragedy of death" (Richmond 17). Michelangelo argued that the Virgin's purity would not allow her to age. "This sculpture, as with all of Michelangelo's work, embodied the idealized human form in the manner of the High Renaissance" (Spence 20). Had this been a sculpture from the Middle Ages, it would have been much more severe and less emotive. Mary's tremendous pain would have distorted her features, leaving her ugly and aged. Michelangelo's portrayal, in contrast, expressed the beauty of the sacrifice made by Jesus and the glory in His departure from this world. The Pieta also summarized the sculptural innovations of fifteenth-century artists while introducing the new monumentality of the High Renaissance style. Standing over fourteen feet tall, the David is an equally famous statue by Michelangelo. The Old Testament hero who battled Goliath is depicted as a muscular youth, the very picture of physical beauty. It has been said that "David is very much like the ancient Greek statues..." (Richmond 19). This similarity to the art of the ancient, classical world shows the influence of humanism on Michelangelo's work. By infusing formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and meaning, he recaptured the classical art of the Greeks and Romans; putting the unemotive work of the Middle Ages firmly in the past. In 1505, Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by Pope Julius II to do the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The vault of the papal chapel was to include nine scenes from the Book of Genesis. "[The Sistine Chapel] was to be an outline of the Christian world: the lower level was dedicated to man, the middle level to the prophets and saints graced with Divine Bliss, and the top level to the surpassing of both former levels in the Last Ju...
