Michelangelo’s Pieta from the Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence
Alice and I just got back from a 10-day trip to Italy. We visited Rome, Florence and Venice, with a side trip to Pisa.
Before the trip, I wondered what I would find to be moving or significant.
Some things stood out more than others. One of those was the art of Michelangelo. It is unsurpassed in skill and greatness. But I was really interested in how his art changed over the course of his life.
In his older years, his work became less dazzling and beautiful. Some art historians thought this might have been the result of declining powers of old age.
But there is another interpretation: that his abilities did not fade but that he had a different point of emphasis. He cared less about beauty and more about the spirit.
The art of his younger years was impressive and beautiful and straightforward. Today, it is likely to be printed on coffee cups and handbags. Everybody likes it.
Later in his life the beauty was replaced by seriousness.
Two major examples come to mind.
One is in the Sistine Chapel. He started painting the famous ceiling when he was 33 years old. There are 9 panels of paintings from Genesis themes: creation through Noah’s flood. Each panel is surrounded by paintings of prophets and other figures. The style feels youthful, energetic and, in a way, optimistic.
25 years after finishing the ceiling he was commissioned to do more painting in the same chapel. The new assignment was to paint the wall behind the altar. It would be a judgment scene from the last days depicting Christ bringing resurrection and reward to the righteous, and damnation to the wicked. It is overwhelming.
There is a tradition that when it was unveiled the pope fell to his knees begging God for mercy on his sins. That story might not be true, but I don’t see how anyone could view this work and not be moved to some serious contemplation. Gone is the optimism from Michelangelo’s earlier years seen in the images on the ceiling.
Michelangelo was a serious Catholic Christian, apparently feeling the weight of his sins. As death approached he seemed to want to point people to God and to move them to think about eternity. No more art for art’s sake.
The second example is seen in his sculptures, particularly his Pietas (depictions of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Jesus after the crucifixion). Michelangelo did several of these. His most famous one, which he finished when he was only 24(!), is beautiful, smooth and polished. It has the honor of being displayed in the Vatican church itself, the headquarters of worldwide Catholicism.
It reminds of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: straightforward beauty.
But his later Pietas changed. When he was an old man he carved another one which is in the Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence. This one is not smooth. It is rough and unfinished. Michelangelo, who had a temper, grew frustrated and smashed part of it (it has since been repaired).
Though rough and unfinished it is very moving. What it lacks in beauty it makes up for in emotion. In this one, Nicodemus is lowering Jesus down from the cross, handing Him to the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene.Â
In his old age he wanted to stir people’s souls.
In the very room where this pieta is displayed there is a sonnet he wrote:
The course of my life has now brought me
through a stormy sea, in a frail ship,
to the common port where, landing,
we account for every deed, wretched or holy.
So that now I clearly see
how wrong the fond illusion was
that made art my idol and my king
leading me to want what harmed me.
My amorous fancies, once foolish and happy:
what sense have they, now that I approach two deaths-
the first of which I know is sure, the second threatening.
Let neither painting nor carving any longer calm
my soul turned to that divine love
that to embrace us opened his arms upon the cross.
At first glance he seems he has become a grumpy old man, tired of life, who went into full Ecclesiastes mode: “All things are wearisome, more than one can say,” (Ecclesiastes 1:8). But a better interpretation is that he is older and wiser and is thinking of eternity…and that the one viewing his art should think of that too.
Consider these words of Jesus: “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing,” (John 6:63); “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
Michelangelo had reached a pinnacle of success that other artists could only dream of, only to find that success empty when compared to spiritual things. Though he did not seem to have a peaceful and joyful spiritual life, in his older years he had a clear view of what mattered. He knew that the best use of art was not to dazzle but to move people to spiritual contemplation.