Michelangelo

Pieta by Michelangelo (1498-1499)

174 cm x 195 cm (68.5 in × 76.8 in)

Italian High Renaissance

A Note from Lady Bison: Because of its three-dimensional nature, sculpture is difficult to appreciate in a two-dimensional format like a book or internet blog. Sculpture really needs to be witnessed personally to properly grasp its artistry.

Michelangelo is my favorite artist, and this is probably my favorite work of art. His most famous composition, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, was painted under protest, took four years to complete — almost alone, while being constantly harassed by busy-body cardinals and annoying fans trying to sneak a peek. And he wasn’t even a painter. Michelangelo always insisted he was a sculptor, believing painting to be an inferior medium. His art made him a house-hold name during the late Renaissance.

Pieta is a general term for a specific and popular subject in traditional Christian art. It is a depiction of Mother Mary holding the dead Jesus Christ after He is taken down from the Cross. Michelangelo himself created three different interpretations of this scene throughout his career. This specific Pieta is the first and most well-known. It is simple – just Mary and Jesus Christ. There is no one or nothing else. There are no unnecessary details or images. No background. No angels or humans emoting on the edges. It’s just the two most important figures in Roman Catholicism immediately after the central event of Christianity. Mary holds onto Jesus one last time before He is buried. While Jesus is in the physical center of the work, Mary is the real focus here. She is the setting for the piece, dominates the view, and dictates the work’s mood.

Mary sits on a stone outcropping and cradles Jesus’ corpse. Her silhouette defines the sculpture’s entire outline. She is massive. The sculptor drapes Jesus across Mary’s lap similar to the folds of her garment. As a result, His full-grown body almost disappears in the composition, increasing Mary’s domination in the work further.

This work reminds me of the Catholic Mass. Mary’s lap is the altar and Jesus’s body is the Eucharist on that altar. Look at her right hand. Notice how she grasps this dead weight, lifting and twisting her Son’s head and face towards the viewer. Meanwhile, her left hand is held out in a limp gesture of speechless grief and pleading. She seems to ask the viewer to see and understand what her Son just went through – what she went through. She offers her dead Son, broken and bleeding as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. “See and believe.”

Michelangelo is also referencing imagery from the innumerable depictions of the Madonna and Child from Christian art. In those works, Jesus is a happy, lively, chubby, rosy-cheeked child, sometimes romping around, and other times sitting on His mother’s lap. Those works carry messages of innocence and hope. Some do hint at Christ’s horrible death, but that is sometime in the distant, abstract future. In The Pieta, that future is now. Notice how Mary doesn’t look at the viewer. In many pietas, she stares us in the eye, almost daring us to ignore this sacrifice. Here, she can’t. She is grieving mother grasping her dead Child, burning His image into her memories. She is trying to hang on for as long as possible. She also isn’t crying. Jesus is dead and Mary is heartbroken. She has cried all her tears and now has nothing left but empty sadness.

Michelangelo was twenty-four years old when this was unveiled. There’s a story that says this work was originally unsigned. When presented to the public, the stunned crowd started ascribing it to some of the greatest sculptors of the day. Michelangelo, still relatively unknown, was so offended that someone else was getting credit for his work that he snuck into where it was in the middle of the night and carved “Michelangelo made this” on Mary’s sash. It’s a neat story and I hope it’s true. It says so much about the sculptor and how proud he was of this work. I have never seen this piece in person. I once saw an exact copy during a touring Vatican show. The copy was exquisite! I can’t imagine what it would be like to see the original.

This work is cared for by the Vatican Museums, Vatican City.