Pieta is a term
for fulfilling your God-given familial duty.
In this sculpture we see a mother grieving over the death of her
son. It would be utterly unnatural for a
mother not to do so and one would probably consider a mother who didn’t grieve
to be fairly twisted in her soul. That
said, The Pieta, is its own art form as well.
It is believed to have originated in Germany and later became popular in
France. A Pieta always depicts Mary
holding her son Jesus after he was brought down from the cross. It may include other figures, but Mary and
Jesus are the constants in this matter.
Michelangelo was commissioned to do this piece when still
in his twenties. As you can see from the
complexity and detail of this piece, this was not the work of someone just
starting out. In fact, Michelangelo was
a prodigy and was trained under the sponsorship and supervision of the renowned
Medici family of Florence at age 14. He
was not only trained in sculpture but also in other visual arts and even
philosophy. He lived during the glory
days of the Florentine Renaissance and was a humanist and renaissance man
through and through.
Like other artists of the Renaissance, he was drawn from
his hometown of Florence to Rome, where between the Catholic Church and wealthy
patrons of the city, he would have enough contracts to make a living as an
artist. This commission came from a
French cardinal who wanted this as his funeral monument. In those days the leader of a church would be
buried in the church building he had been connected to in life and so having beautiful
monument with your grave would ensure that people would remember you in death.
Eventually the church building where the Pieta stood and
the cardinal was buried had to be torn down.
This sculpture was moved and placed in St. Peter’s basilica where it has
been since the mid 1800’s. If you have
ever been or plan to visit the Vatican in Rome, this will be a part of your
tour as it is such a famous work. If
you are going by yourself to St. Peters, just as you walk into the sanctuary and
are facing the altar, turn immediately to your right and you will see either
the Pieta in the first side chapel or you will see a horde of tourists, many of
them occluding your view of the statue with their Ipads in camera mode. It is among the most beautiful works of art
in the basilica and worth lunging through a crowd to see or, if time permits,
coming back in the early evening when things are less crowded and taking a long
gaze at it. Since the early 70’s, when a
mentally deranged man attacked the statue with a rock hammer, it has been
behind bullet-proof glass. In a way this
is a blessing as
the oil from millions of human hands (which would touch this statue if there
were access) discolors marble in a fairly grotesque way.
Background aside, what is this statue’s message to us the
viewer? First look at the face of
Mary. Mary is a young woman. In fact, much too young to have a son in his
thirties as Jesus would have been at his death.
Michelangelo was asked about this detail. He said that it is because in the spiritual
realm Mary is the daughter of her Son Jesus even though on earth she was the
vessel God used in his incarnation. This
is very revealing about Michelangelo’s theology. The Catholics had long thought of Mary as
almost a fourth member of the Godhead. But
Michelangelo was known to have a theology that was more in line with
Protestantism even though he would have never left the Roman Catholic
church. Another detail we are intended
to see in the sculpture is that Mary and Jesus’ faces are not in agony as we
would expect. Instead there is a quiet
serenity in both their faces. This is to
speak another spiritual truth: because
of the agony of Christ’s passion on the cross, there is now peace between God
and man.
When Jesus entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he told
his critics that if the people didn’t worship, the very stones would cry out in
praise. As we look at this sculpture, it
is easy to forget that it is just one piece of stone. And as such, the stone speaks a truth to
us—the Lord has come and all is well.
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