Sorrow in stone
Elmo Fernando
When Michelangelo completed this monumental sculpture in 1500, the
Pieta
left the Vatican for the first time to exhibit the marble carving in
the United States.
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Michelangelo’s Pieta |
As the sculptor completed the Pieta towards the end of 1499, he was
barely 24 years old. Living almost to nearly five score years he carved
sculptures of immense force and beauty with the flawless beauty that one
could observe in this remarkable work. Born on March 6, 1475 as the
second son of Buonarroti, a rich Florentine family Michelangelo
commenced his forte while still as a kid playing the truant from school
in order to draw.
This was the time Lorenzo de’ Medici Il Magnifio opened a school of
sculpture to revive the vanishing art of marble carving and Angelo spent
four years working and learning prodigiously. His amazing skill and
passion for sculpture, he was welcome to move into the Medici Palace as
a son of the family. When Michelangelo was 17 years old, Lorenzo de’
Medici passed away.
Since Angelo was sacked by the late Lorenzo’s son, he fled to
Bologna. Meanwhile Michelangelo met Jacopo Galli a banker who sensed his
talent and commissioned him to carve a Bacchus. This was Angelo’s first
life-size sculpture which he designed and carved with a staggering
boldness of creativity. The outstretched arm of the tipsy Bacchus.
Just how the Pieta, Michelangelo’s most sacred work arose out of the
Bacchus, his most profane is one of those mysteries that could be
answered with absolute faith. Among Jacopo Gallis friends was the aged
French Cardinal Jean de Villiers de la Grolaic, who wanted a sculpture
carved for the Chapel of the Kings of France at the Basilica of St.
Peter’s.
There was no way for the Cardinal to say by looking at the Bacchus to
tell by looking at the Bacchus that youth who created the epitome of
pagan dissoluteness could also turn white Curara marble into the pure
and the deeply spiritual. But Jacopo Gallis took the risk. Drawing up a
contract for Michelangelo which the Cardinal Gallis promised that the
work shall be exquisite as any marble to be seen in Rome today. |
