THE STORY
BEHIND
Michelangelo's
FourPietas
By IRVING STONE
Author of "Th Agony and tho fataty," tho bost-tclling biographical novel about Michelangelo
Cablegrams are flying back and forth
between New York and Rome.
Their subject: plans for transporting
one of the most precious cargoes ever
shipped across the Atlantic.
At the urging of Cardinal Spellman, the Vati
can has agreed to send its Michelangelo Pieta to
New York for exhibition at the 19C4 World's
Fair. This will be the first time that the statue
has left St. Peter's since Michelangelo installed
it there himself in 1500.
This Pieta is possibly the most beloved and the
best-known art work in Christendom. Yet it is
not the only Pieta created by Michelangelo. During
his 75 years as a sculptor, he carved three other
versions which are startlingly different from
his first and most famous one.
The first Pieta was created for French Cardi
nal Groslaye, who had been given permission by
Pope Alexander VI to "leave something behind
him of beauty in Rome." It was Michelangelo's
first well-paid commission.
To find the solitude and the quiet for concen
trated carving, Michelangelo moved into two
rather poor rooms overlooking the Tiber. Me
purchased a tremendous block of marble and
brought in Jewish models from Trastevere in
order to sketch his Christ and young Roman ma
trons to sit as Mary. Then he entered the marble
and began blocking out the Pieta.
From the very outset it was a revolutionary
concept. He planned two life-sized figures, the
Virgin and Jesus, where before the Christ had
been a small secondary figure. He placed the life
sited Jesus on His sorrowing mother's lap. And
he kept the beautiful face of the Virgin as youth
ful as the day the Archangel Gabriel appeared
to her at the Annunciation.
Disturbed by this, Cardinal Groslaye asked
Michelangelo: "How does the Madonna's face re
main so young, younger than her Son's?"
"It appeared to me, your Grace, that the Vir
gin Mary would not age." replied Michelangelo.
"She was pure; she would have kept the fresh
ness of youth." The Cardinal accepted Michel
angelo's spiritual logic. Since the statue was so
unconventional, the sculptor and some of his
friends had to sneak it into the Chapel of the
Kings of France in the old Basilica of Constan
tine. But this was not the worst of the indigni
ties. Although it was the Jubilee year of 1500,
few of the tourists bothered to come into the
gloomy chapel to look at the Pieta.
One day Michelangelo walked into the chapel
and found a large Lombardy family standing in
front of his carving, quarreling about its author
ship. He heard the mother say: "I tell you I rec
ognize the work. It is by that fellow from Osteno
who makes all the tombstones."
"No, no," cried her husband. "It is one by our
countryman, Cristoforo Solari, called 'the Hunch
back.' He has done many of them."
Michelangelo was so outraged that that night
he once again sneaked into St Peter's, but this
time with a candle in his cap and a hammer and
chisel in his hands. On the band that ran across
the Virgin's bosom, he cut the words, Michel
angelo Buonarroti of Florence made this. It was
the only carving he ever signed. Many people
think it is his finest work.
Michelangelo always wanted to sculpture an
other Pieta. Yet circumstances and his demand
ing patrons kept him from getting back to the
theme for almost 50 years!
In his Duomo Pieta, the theme remained the
same, the Virgin Mary supporting the dead
Christ in her arms. But half a century of bitterly
hard work, frustration, grief, suffering, and dis
appointment had changed Michelangelo. The aura
of almost sublime beauty is no longer to be found
in the faces, and the marble is roughhewn.
Michelangelo was 80. Thinking he was dying
and wanting this Pieta for his own tomb, he
carved a likeness of himself standing behind Mary
and Jesus and he included the bashed-in nose
he had received from a fellow student in sculp
ture school.
Ironically, Michelangelo somehow broke part
of the marble block or perhaps stumbled across
a hollow vein. Furious at himself, he gave the
unfinished Pieta away. Another sculptor added
a disproportionately small and delicate Mary
Magdalene which detracts from the statue.
This second Pieta dropped out of sight for
nearly 100 years, and then for two centuries it
was kept behind the main altar of the Florentine
cathedral, where it would not be too conspicuous.
Today it occupies the first chapel of the left apse,
where it is seen by all. But Michelangelo is bur
ied in Santa Croce, his neighborhood church; he
never did get this Pieta to adorn his tomb.
Michelangelo's third Pieta, carved about 1556,
is known as the Palestrina Pieta. It is a strange
piece, the only major Michelangelo carving that
is not cut out of the pure white Carrara marble
he so dearly loved. It is made of an antique
marble-colored limestone.
The Palestrina Pieta is not beautiful. It is
harsh and severe; the body of Christ is enor
mously massive about the shoulders and chest,
and His legs are shrinking and spindly. The Vir
gin's crudely blocked face is that of an aging
peasant under a crushing burden in attempting
to hold up her dead son. Nevertheless, it has
enormous emotional power.
The kourth pieta, known as the Rondanini,
has the most dramatic story. Michelangelo be
gan it when he spoiled the Duomo Pieta, and he
was still carving on it at the time of his death at
89. Several years before, when he had almost com
pleted it, he grew discontented with it and changed
the statue in amazing fashion.
Originally it appears to have been a single
massive Christ. In converting it to a Pieta,
Michelangelo changed Jesus's head into Mary's
head, then carved Christ's head out of what
originally had been His shoulder. The legs of
Christ remained untouched and are magnificent,
but Michelangelo died before he could complete
the face of the Virgin. There is also the phenome
non of Christ's right arm. It had been attached to
the original shoulder, but it now stands free in
space, cut off at the elbow.
Michelangelo never was able to return in his
own mind or in his carving hands to the sweet
and gentle sorrow of the St Peter's Pieta, or to
its divine beauty. Life walked harshly over his
years; and his chisel moved harshly over the
Duomo Pieta, the Palestrina Pieta, and the Ron
danini Pieta.
Yet where high polish is missing, where com
passion is roughhewn instead of refined, there
comes in its place the deep self-agony of the man
who has suffered everything life has to offer
and consequently feels a spiritual sympathy and
kinship for all mankind.
4 Fmll Wrrkly. January II. IMJ