Is anybody happier because you passed his way?
Does anyone remember that you spoke to him today?
This day is almost over, and its toiling time is through;
Is there anyone to utter now a kindly word of you? – Edgar A Guest

The Madonna della Pietà, or the Pietà (Our Lady of Pity), at St Peter’s Basilica, a sculpture carved from a single block of Carrara marble, was completed 526 years ago by Michelangelo, then 23. The splendid sculpture is on display in St Peter’s Basilica, and it was one of the many memorable artistic works I saw while visiting Vatican City on my honeymoon with my beautiful wife nineteen years ago. And while it was encased in bullet-proof glass because some mindless scoundrels vandalised this exquisite work of art in 1972, one is nevertheless still able to absorb into the mind the master sculptor’s inspiration, as over three years, he carefully carved this single block of Carrara until unveiling its glory for humanity to gaze upon for time immemorial and for eternity to come. Indeed, when Michelangelo completed the Pieta, his fellow sculptors doubted that such a young sculptor could have carved such a masterpiece, so Michelangelo returned to the piece and chiselled his name into the sash between Mary’s breasts. Michelangelo Buonarroti made this,” were the words he carved on the sash, and it was the only sculpture he ever signed.

The Madonna della Pietà captures the moment when Jesus, taken down from the cross, is given to his mother Mary. Mary looks younger than Jesus; art historians believe a passage inspired Michelangelo in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: O virgin mother, daughter of your Son, your merit so ennobled human nature that its divine Creator did not hesitate to become its creature. Michelangelo’s aesthetic interpretation of the Pietà is unprecedented in Italian sculpture because it balances early forms of naturalism (representing subject-matter truthfully, without artificiality, exaggeration, or speculative or supernatural elements) with the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty (conceptions of beauty aim to capture what is essential to all beautiful things. Classical conceptions define beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated, harmonious whole). The statue was commissioned by a French cardinal, Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, who was then the French ambassador in Rome. The figures are out of proportion, owing to the complexity of depicting a fully-grown man cradled full-length in a woman’s lap. Her monumental drapery conceals Mary’s body, and the figures’ relationship appears quite natural. Michelangelo’s interpretation of the Pietà was far different from those of other artists, as he sculpted a young, beautiful Mary rather than an older woman. The link below is to Carel Huydecoper’s very informative video about the Madonna della Pietà, a video you should watch on this ‘Oh damn, it’s Monday again’:

Notwithstanding my agnosticism, there were many reasons, from an artistic, historical, and architectural perspective, that motivated me to visit Vatican City that day in 2007. And while it might be trite for me to partially quote the final verse of Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, as I stood there gazing upon the Madonna della Pietà in March 2007, one felt Eternity in an hour.