Which cardinal commissioned Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's?

Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas commissioned Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Bilhères-Lagraulas was a French cardinal and ambassador in Rome. Around 1498, he commissioned the young Michelangelo to create a marble Pietà for his funerary chapel, known as the Chapel of Saint Petronilla or the Chapel of the French Kings, in Old St. Peter’s Basilica.

Michelangelo carved the sculpture from Carrara marble and completed it around 1499, when he was in his early twenties. It depicts the Virgin Mary holding Christ after the Crucifixion, combining intense subject matter with an unusually serene and idealized Renaissance style.

The original chapel was later demolished during the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, and the sculpture was moved to its present location in the new basilica. It is also the only work Michelangelo is known to have signed. Cardinals Soderini, Riario, and Giulio de’ Medici were important Renaissance figures, but they did not commission this Pietà.