What is the name of Michelangelo's unfinished marble statue in the Hermitage Museum?

Michelangelo’s unfinished marble statue in the Hermitage Museum is called Crouching Boy. The small sculpture was carved around 1530–1533 and is the only work by Michelangelo in the Hermitage’s collection.

The figure is a naked boy folded inward in a crouching pose. Some interpretations suggest that he may be pulling a thorn from his foot, while others connect the pose with mourning or eternal youth. The surface remains visibly incomplete: the facial features, hair, and body are recognizable, but parts of the marble retain the roughness of the working process.

Michelangelo originally intended the sculpture for the Medici family tombs in Florence. Its unfinished condition is often discussed alongside his broader non-finito practice, in which partially carved surfaces could remain visible rather than being fully polished. That does not make it another Pietà or one of the planned slave figures.

Crouching Boy is approximately 54 centimetres high and is preserved at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The title distinguishes it from Michelangelo’s larger unfinished works, including Saint Matthew and the Awakening Slave.