With chiseled touch The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mold. The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows. – MichelangeloMythologies from the Babylonian and the Yoruba, to scriptures from the Hindu and Christian to the Muslim tell us that the Divine molded the human body from common clay and breathed life into it. Many, in the glorious moments when he tries to emulate God, crafts shapes that resembles creatures too. Some of these, like a child’s doll out of playdough, are amusing. Others, such as sculptures from stone, range from the impressive to the magnificent.
Michelangelo’s Pietà – which I have had the privilege to see more than once – is one such. It was carved from a huge slab of cold, amorphous marble in the closing decade of the fifteenth century. It stands in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
This was the only work on which Michelangelo has inscribed his name. It was commissioned by a French cardinal, to be placed on his tomb as an everlasting memorial. Though the good man was not living up to his full potential for humility, he inadvertently inspired one of the most magnificent sculptures in humanity’s heritage.
When I saw it for the first time, I stood transfixed in front of it for a few minutes, trying to drink with my eyes (using a mixed metaphor) every drop of that magnificent, tragic sculpture in which a very peaceful Mary is holding Christ’s emaciated and barely clothed body on her lap. The grieving mother looks as youthful as her son. I had not paid attention to this detail until the fast-talking guide drew our attention to it. He went on to say that when critics complained about this, Michelangelo replied that Mary’s chastity imprinted perennial youth on her face. In other versions of the Pietà, such as the one in Nürnberg, Mary does look much older, he said.
Even while listening to these details, I kept marveling at the folds in Mary’s clothes and in the scarf over her head. Her right hand is holding Christ through a cloth, so as not to touch his sacred body. Her left palm is open, as if to say, “Such is the world we live in.” The resignation in Mary’s face seems to tell us, “If this is the will of God, I have no choice but to accept it.” This is a valuable lesson for all who are confronted with a sorrow resulting from an irreversible tragedy. It seems to remind us that both good and bad things, happy and unhappy events, must be taken as God’s will. The Pietà illustrated what Michelangelo had said: “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
During a second visit to the Vatican in the late 1970s, I found the Pietà enclosed in a glass case. This time the tourist guide told us that in 1972, a deranged man jumped over the railing, and brutally struck the Madonna with a hammer, breaking her left arm, hurting her left eye, and chipping off part of her nose. The perpetrator of this heinous act was not found guilty because the man was not in his senses. To use Christ’s words from Luke, they forgave him for he did not know what he was doing. In any case, the restored statute is better protected. The incident dramatically illustrated the truth that if humanity has the potential to create great works of art and technology, it also has the capacity to destroy even the most beautiful thing and wreak havoc in the world. This dual capacity of humans has left its mark in various places and contexts in human history.
There are marvelous sculptures in many parts of the world, from modest icons in homes to magnificent ones in museums. The Pietà is a sculpture that includes more than one person: one of the few of that kind. It is not a statue which usually represents a historical personage, standing tall or riding on horseback, but the representation of a human and a Divine. Unlike other sculptures, it is a work of art, as much to be admired as to be revered.
That beautiful figure was carved from an inert block of marble by the gifted hands of a human being. As a poet once wrote, the stricken marble grows to beauty with the chisel of the sculptor. But it has lived for more than half a millennium and may be there for more centuries to come. Every statue outlives its creator by a few centuries. The Creator of creatures lives longer than the creatures, but the artifacts of artists last longer than the artist.
One reason for this is that living bodies depend on complex biochemistry within, whereas lifeless sculptures have nothing inside to wear out and cease functioning. Between animate creatures that live for decades and natural formations like planets and rocks that can endure for eons, are solid sculptures that can last for as long as civilizations survive. To this last category belongs Michelangelo’s La Pietà, one of the precious treasures in humanity’s rich heritage.
Spurts of Thought 