The desire to simplify things must be present in everyone. It comes intime, when we realize our lives are finite. Time and again, the imageof Michaelangelo’s Rondanini Pieta haunts me. I remember how I admired(I still do) his first Pieta, scuplted in 1499. It must be one of themost famous sculptures in the whole world, and probably one of themost beautiful ones, too. The difference between the two works,sculpted within decades of each other, is striking, as if they hadbeen burn under the chisel of two different artists. And however muchI admire and love his Pieta, I know that he was closer to the truth(or finding himself, or God, or…