Michelangelo was commissioned to create The Pietà by the French cardinal Jean de Bilhères, ambassador to the Holy See, who wanted a sculpture for his own future tomb in a chapel of the old St. Peter’s Basilica. The contract was signed in August 1498, when the artist was just 23 years old, and he completed the work around 1499, at the age of 24. He carved the piece from a single block of Carrara marble, achieving an almost impossible compositional balance: a woman with proportions slightly larger than those of an adult man so that she could support his body without the scene appearing forced, a detail that generations of art critics have interpreted as a deliberate artistic license on the sculptor’s part. It is the only work Michelangelo ever signed, after overhearing by chance that some visitors were attributing it to another Lombard sculptor. According to Vasari, that very night he returned to his studio and carved his name into the sash across the Virgin’s chest, later regretting that act of vanity and vowing never to sign any of his subsequent works again.