Pieta

by Dennis Green

On my one visit to Rome, I spent a day at St. Peter’s Basilica near Vatican City with Diane, and inside we took in all that magnificence. I stood for nearly an hour in the little Pieta Chapel off to one side, immersed in the sight of Michelangelo’s sculpture. Madonna and Child here become the Grieving Mary cradling the body of her dead son, Jesus.

His lifeless corpse sprawls across her lap, his face showing not a trace of the tortures he has endured, his eyes closed in eternal rest. Her face is turned downward, resolutely coming to terms with the terrible outcome of his ministry. Tears streamed down my face that day as I felt myself sinking inside the very marble itself. That is the power of great art.

Michelangelo was only 24 when he completed this sculpture, and yet he had an amazing vision of this sad moment in time, after Jesus was taken down from the cross and before his body was laid in the tomb and sealed inside with a huge stone. The style is “High Renaissance,” but the work is not about style at all, rather the artist’s awful realization that even the Son of God is mortal.

There are three Michelangelo Pietas altogether — the one in Rome, one in Milan, and a third in Florence, which I also saw on that incredible journey across Italy. The Florence Pieta is, if anything, even more powerful, because after working on it for ten years as the intended capstone for his own tomb, Michelangelo tried to destroy it in 1555.

The sculpture was saved by a servant named Antonio, bought by the Florentine Banker Bandini and repaired by one of Michelangelo’s assistants, Cacagni. The Bandini Pieta features four figures, Mary on her knees trying to support the body of Jesus, helped by a bearded man, (Nicodemus?), whose countenance is said to be based on Michelangelo himself.

A second woman, angelic, perhaps Mary Magdalene, also helps support the body of Jesus, holding up his thigh, while Jesus’ arm encircles her shoulders in a final embrace. This drama of death illuminates despair and loss, but also loving and compassionate support. What frustrations led Michelangelo to attack and then abandon his own work, we can only imagine.

“The Pity” as the Italian translates is a much more complex concept than our simple English word suggests. It is what I felt that day, a surge, a spasm, a passionate rising of sympathy, for the dead Jesus, for his stricken mother, but also for humanity — including those who whipped and scourged and crucified him — and for ourselves. Not self-pity, but realizing with a shock that we are a part of that drama, that we are not exempt from his suffering, his mortality or his death.

There is a certain tendency among cynics to a glib and shallow dismissal of such emotions, and such events. How could it possibly include ME? I’m virile, I’m healthy, I’m athletic, lively, bright, comfy, amused and entertained. I’ve got mine, and I am IMMORTAL! “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

I pity the poor fool I was when I sounded just this way, all puffed up with my own self-importance. I visited Rome that year, stood before the Pieta, only a few months after my third heart attack and bypass surgery, which altered my outlook on life. Before all that, I would not have been so absorbed by the Pieta.

And now, I feel that pity for my former self, and for anyone who feels immortal. Such supercilious arrogance as mine merely puts one at a far remove from reality, from other people, and from the compassion that takes its place the minute we learn otherwise.

©2010 Dennis Green