Michelangelo's Pietà, detail of Mary

cults3d

"© 1982 MMA"—Copyright inscription by the Metropolitan Museum of Art This 3D capture was made from a marble resin cast molded directly from the Pietà. A label on the back of the cast reads: "This facsimile copy is authorized by the Vatican Museums. It is produced under the supervision of the Reproduction Studio of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from direct impression molds of the original sculpture developed by the Department of Scientific Research of the Vatican Museums." I imagine the Vatican and Met took a great deal of care making these molds and casts, and as a good cast is extremely accurate, this model may be the most faithful digital copy of Mary available to the public until the Vatican freely publishes their own 3D survey of the Pietà--if and when that ever happens. The copyright notice the Met scrawled into the back would be funny if it weren't so problematic. Michelangelo's work is so clearly in the public domain that it's hard to imagine what legitimate purpose the Met could have had in mind.