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August Sander was a photographer who used a certain formula for all his photographs. By presenting businessmen, farmers, actors, and beggars all with the same stark directness, the German-born Sander made everyone the everyman. Sander thought we can learn from everyone and every class in society, saying “We can tell from appearance the work someone does or does not do; we can read in his face whether he is happy or troubled, for life unavoidably leaves its trace there.”

Alberto Giacometti

L’Homme qui marche II (Walking Man II), 1960

Michelangelo, The Pietà, c.1496

As told by Vasari in his Life of Michelangelo, 1568:

Michelangelo put into this work so much love and effort that (something he never did again) he left his name written across the sash over Our Lady’s chest. The reason for this was that one day he went along to where the statue was and found a crowd of strangers from Lombardy singing its praises; then one of them asked another who made it, only to be told: ‘Our Gobbo from Milan’.

Michelangelo stood there not saying a word, but thinking it very odd to have all his efforts attributed to someone else. Then one night, taking his chisels, he shut himself in with a light and carved his name on the statue.

He was 21 years old when he carved this masterpiece from the marble block. An astounding achievement. And divinely inspired.

Description of the Pieta by Vasari:

…the Pietà was a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture… it staggers belief that the hand of an artist could have executed this inspired and admirable work so perfectly and in so short a time. It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh. Michelangelo put into this work so much love and effort…

The youthfulness of the Virgin Mary was much criticised and his biographer Condivi brought up the subject with Michelangelo:

Some complain that the Mother is too young compared to the son. One day I was talking to Michelangelo of this objection, who replied:

Le tympan du Jugement dernier de la Cathédrale Saint-Lazare d'Autan, attribué à Gislebert, ou Gislebertus, vers 1130

The tympanon of Judgment day on the Cathédrale Saint-Lazare, Autun, France, attributed to Gislebert, or Gislebertus, circa 1130

Bernward’s bronze doors, Hildesheim Cathedral, Germany. c 1015. These enormous doors - 16 feet tall - are single casts! Check out the hinge pin and the back. They were cast by Bishop Bernward (really, all the sources say he directed the work himself) for the monastery of St Michael’s in Hildesheim and later moved down to the cathedral in the town. The Cathedral was recently restored within an inch of its life, and the narthex in which the doors stand seems very frigid and museum-like rather than the entrance to a church. Oh, well - they’ve lasted a thousand years, so in another thousand things will be different again.

La Cappella Scrovegni (The Scrovegni Chapel) in Padua, Italy