February 8, 2016 • 35 mins
While Michelangelo's sculpture of Mary holding the deceased body of Christ is the most famous depiction of that moment in art, that scene has been the focus of many works. And once, the famous version took a trip across the ocean.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Build it Beautiful. Join me Julie Douglas for the Stuff
of Life, a sound scaped podcast that explores everything that
makes us human that nothing is too beautiful to happen
(00:21):
in life. Look for a new episode every Wednesday in
iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm
Crazy V Wilson, and today we're going to talk about
what is perhaps the most famous of all images in
Christian are are definitely one of the most famous, uh,
the Piata. And I was originally going to research just
the attack on Michelangelo's piazza in nine two, and we
are going to talk about that. But as I got
(01:06):
to researching that, I ended up down this sort of
wonderful rabbit hole of this image in art history is
depicted by many artists over time, and specifically the ones
that Michelangelo worked on, because there were more than one.
And we will talk about all of those. So this
episode ended up really being a little bit of a
smartest board. There is a little bit of light art history.
(01:27):
There is a little bit about michel Angelo, but we're
not really doing a biography of him. We're just talking
about these works of art and kind of some of
his life surrounding them, not in great depth, and a
bit about art defacement more than one in fact. And
we're also gonna touch on the great care that is
needed to move a sculpture of the nature of the
(01:48):
famous piazza that michel Angelo worked on. So we're getting
a little bit of all of that in today's episode.
Just in case you don't know the Pieta and the
jed world senses any depiction or representation of the Virgin
Mary morning over Christ's dead body. I don't know why
(02:09):
I suddenly was like that sounded so bleak, right, Well,
it is bleak. They're very sad, you should yeah. Well,
obviously the word derives from the Latin word for pity. However,
the use of this word to apply to these pieces
comes after they start to appear in art. Yeah, we
(02:31):
see them starting, these images of of Mary holding Christ
after the crucifixion around the thirteenth century, but that word
doesn't really come in in that sense until I think
the sixteen hundreds. So another thing that's interesting is that
although this is a significant moment in the Christian religion,
this scene, in this this imagery, that scene actually isn't
(02:54):
present in the Gospels, Like there's not a specific moment
where they describe this. Uh. The Christ crucifixion is in there.
The descent from the cross, or the deposition as it's
often called uh, lamentation, Christ being laid on the ground,
and the intombment are all there in the New Testament,
but there really is no description of Mary cradling her son.
(03:17):
Yet it became a really important image. An a lecture
given by the Right Reverend Lord Harry's at the Museum
of London in March, the speaker outlines the factors that
he believes contribute to the origin of the pacha as
a significant scene in religious art, despite it not actually
being something that's ever mentioned in scripture. Harry's describes the
(03:39):
development of devotional images versus narrative images, and whereas narrative
religious art clearly shows a story playing out, devotional imagery
takes these images out of their narrative context, and this
came about in the thirteen hundreds in relation to an
intense religious reverence. These images were basically so that the
(04:00):
devoted could fixate and think on the suffering of Christ
as a part of personal prayer and meditation. So, as
part of a group of common devotional images to come
out of Germany, specifically during the hundreds, the scene of
the pat I emerged. This is due to the fact
that Mary, as a religious figure was gaining a greater position,
so her suffering too was to be contemplated in devotionals.
(04:23):
Mary's pain and lament over Christ's death had long been
a part of religious writings before the visual of this
moment of grief became a standard. There are three main
types of Pieta. The first is the early German, in
which the torso of Christ is upright, with the head,
arms and legs at diagonal placements. In relation to the torso,
(04:45):
Christ is often portrayed in a smaller size compared to Mary.
This hearkens back to his child state. Sometimes when you
see these, they're a bit jarring because he looks like
an adult man, but he's very small in relation to Mary.
Uh and his self ring is usually depicted in in
great depth and with clarity. He looks like he's in
terrible pain. Mary, for her part, is often shown in
(05:07):
deep sorrow. Her face is often contorted with grief, and
the first of these images in this style date back
to again the early undreds. The second type, which came
about in the late fifteenth century, is characterized by Christ's
body depicted with a continuous curve. Mary's grief is often
more restrained in these, and she often holds her hands
(05:28):
in a prayer position rather than holding the body of
her son. And the third type, which also dates back
to the fifteenth century, is characterized by the body of
Christ in a horizontal, usually straighter position, and these often
feature more people in the tableau's not just Christ and Mary,
and there's often a peaceful landscape in the background, and
(05:49):
sometimes there is an architectural feature. Christ wounds are frequently,
though not always, less of a focus. It's a little
bit of a softer image, it's not so fraught with grief.
Between thirteen hundred and fifteen hundred, personal iconography became a
lot more common. Previously to that art had been more
of a public concept, so during this period, works of
(06:12):
art representing the Pieta became more prevalent in people's private
homes instead of just out in public spaces. So it
is a little bit early on, but in the next
segment it runs kind of long, and we're going to
talk about the three different versions of the Pieta created
by Michelangelo. So we're gonna pause and do our sponsor
break now so we can keep all of that chunk together.
(06:33):
So to get back to the story and discussion of
Michelangelo's work. In the fourteen nineties, Michelangelo, still very young
at this point, traveled from Florence to Venice and to
Bologna and eventually ended up in Rome. In fourteen, when
Michelangelo was commissioned to create his famous Pieta, he was
only twenty four. The contract was signed on August. That
(06:58):
document is actually now part of the Attican's collection. The
work was intended for the funeral chapel of St. Petronia
in St. Peter's Basilica. The person who requested that art
was the French ambassador, Cardinal bill Air de la Grela.
That piece would be part of the decor of the
chapel where he was to be interred and where funeral
(07:19):
services would be given for other people as well. Once
tasked with this piece, uh the artist Michelangelo set out
to find the most perfect block of marble he could find.
He found one eventually, which he claimed had no faults,
and he set to work. Michelangelo worked on Jean de
Blare's commission from hundred and he worked in the round,
(07:41):
so he was able to access all sides of the
piece at once, and the finished sculpture waste three tons.
Blaire had died in he did not get to see
the completed work. This sculpture, which a lot of our
listeners have probably seen at least in pictures of Spectacular,
will include a link to the show notes with a
virtual tour of it online. It's really unique in its peacefulness.
(08:05):
Mary appears to be very young. It's an appearance that
Michelangelo attributed to her purity when people criticized his choice
to show her as a youth. The torso wound of
Christ is minimized, and there is, above almost all else
the sense of serenity to the work. Rather than suffering,
Mary is not directly touching the body of Christ in
(08:28):
this sculpture. There's actually a cloth carved in between her
hand and the side of his torso where she's supporting him,
and this denotes the sacred nature of his physical body.
The relative sizes of the two figures is also something
to note. While her head is proportional to her son's
in the sculpture, Mary's body is larger, unlike in the
(08:49):
early German style of pH i works, it appears to
be more of the visual and logistical need. In Michelangelo's sculpture,
Mary's body needed to be large enough to support her son,
and the depth of the cloth draped around Mary gives
the sculpture an incredibly realistic effect, but also hides the
size disparity. And this commission Peace was also intended to
(09:12):
sit above the altar in the Funeral Chapter chapel, so
part of the size disparity was possibly to add to
a visual illusion both of Mary offering up Christ just
as mourners were offering up their deceased loved ones uh
and also if she had been a normal size in
the sculpture, like if you were standing near it, uh,
she then would have appeared unrealistically tiny. Once the sculpture
(09:35):
was placed in its intended position in the chapel, and
we know michel Angelo kind of thought about these things
and other sculptures. It comes up. People will talk about
the David sometimes and how it was meant to be
displayed and how the proportions were affected. So we know
that he thought about this kind of thing, uh, and
that you know he was keenly aware of how I
and sightline and presentation would affect the need for size.
(09:59):
This was the only one of michel Angelo's sculptures that
he carved his full name into. Allegedly, he had overheard
visitors attributing the work to another artist after it had
been installed in the chapel, and so he made his
mark on the ribbon draped across Mary's chest by night.
Later on, though, he regretted having done that, and he
vowed to never again put his name on his work
(10:21):
because he found it to be prideful. And this sculpture
was so well received that it was a really significant
factor in the launch of michel Angelo's career. This was
again very early on, he was in his twenties. Immediately
upon its reveal, this was seen as a masterpiece, and
other artists flocked to the chapel to see it. And
this is sort of one of those wonderfully rare cases
(10:43):
of an artist actually appreciate being appreciated in his time
rather than after it because michel Angelo lived another sixt
or four years after completing the Pietas, so he was
able to see the effect his work had on people
and how beloved it was from basically day one of
his existence. It kind of made him a rock star.
So the Pieta that you think of when you hear
the name Michelangelo, that one that we have just been
(11:05):
talking about. It's his most famous, but not his only
depiction of that moment. His second Piazza, also known as
the Florentine Pieta, and the deposition was worked on over
a number of years, beginning in fifty seven, and this
piece was not commissioned. It was intended by the artist
to adorn his own final resting place, and as such
(11:26):
was something of a passion project. The Florentine Pichi is
kind of a puzzler. It's meeting is not immediately clear.
Both the stage of the Christ's narrative and he was
included in the tableau have really been debated by art
historians at great length. In the narrative context, some elements
of the piece indicate that it's a representation of the deposition,
(11:47):
Others hint that it's more of a Pieta, and yet
others lead people to interpretation that it's supposed to be
the entombment of Christ. It's even possible that Michelangelo intended
to blend multiple narratives into this one work. And there
are four figures in this sculpture, so already we're at
a departure from the classic marry in Christ set up.
(12:10):
One is Christ, one is the Virgin Mary, and another
person is Mary Magdalene. But the fourth figure is where
the confusion and the variant interpretations really come into play.
This fourth figure is a hooded figure and its male
and stands above the other three. And it is not
entirely clear to everyone who's supposed to be. I will
say when I say that, there are people who believe
(12:32):
very firmly that they know who it's supposed to be,
but debate continues. It could be the biblical figure Joseph
of Arimathea, who provided his own intended tomb as the
resting place for Jesus after the crucifixion. It could be Nicodemus,
the Pharisee, who appears in the Gospel of John and
assists in the burial of Jesus. The Nicodemus interpretation is
(12:55):
a common one. If the figure is Joseph of aramassay
that that figure combined with the presence of Mary Magdalen,
would suggest that this is an intombant piece, as those
two figures are traditionally more associated with art depicting that
phase of the narrative. If it is Nicodemus, it may
hint more strongly at being the deposition, as both Joseph
(13:16):
and Nicodemus are featured in that element in the narrative
traditionally in art, but Nicodemus is not normally featured in
depictions of the entombment. In fifty five, michel Angelo attempted
to destroy the Florentine pat He was successful in breaking
off Christ's left leg and arm, and he chipped other sections.
(13:38):
And why he did this is unclear, but there are
a number of theories, and the truth may lie in
some combination of several or all of them. One is
that the artist was troubled by a particularly problematic vein
in the marble, which frustrated him to the point of despair,
and he just got angry and wanted to smatch it.
Anybody who's done something creative can know that those moments happen.
(14:00):
Another is that his servant had been nagging him to
finish the piece, which made him irritated with the whole
enterprise again to the point where he was just frustrated
and angry. Those two reasons were given by Michelangelo himself
when pressed on the matter in the account written by
one of his contemporaries, Georgia Vasari. The third and fourth
theories and exactly what happened are a little bit more involved.
(14:23):
So the first of these involves the placement of Christ's leg,
which is slung across his mother's lap, and that this
was a problematic symbol that michel Angelo believed could be misconstrued,
or that he felt that he hadn't properly captured. So
at this point in our history, a leg placed in
another's lap held a sexual meaning. It suggested that the
(14:43):
pair involved in this crossing of legs across laps were
romantically or erotically entwined, and for Christ to have his
leg in his mother's lap, though actually easily fit in
with the symbolism of Mary representing the church as the
bride of Christ. So this was not necessarily an issue,
and there was existing art at the time that included
the leg of Christ draped across Mary as he was
(15:06):
taken down in the deposition, and and as in a
state where the body is not supported by the self,
so it's it's drooping and it's falling. It is possible, however, though,
that michel Angelo was concerned that there could be confusion,
and so he intended to alter this piece by first
removing the leg, so it was less of a destruction
(15:27):
situation and more of a let's a race and start
over and fix some pieces. The fourth theory involves the
figure again. It's often been discussed that the Nicodemus figure
was also intended to be a self portrait of michel Angelo.
As Nicodemus had connections to sculpting, this would have been
a pretty natural move on the part of the artist,
(15:47):
but michel Angelo had become more involved with the school
of belief known as Nicodemism, which didn't wish to separate
from the Catholic Church, but also held beliefs more in
line with Protestant values. He may have intended to remove
his likeness as Nicodemus from the work in order to
avoid suspicion that he was actually a religious dissenter. Eventually,
(16:10):
Michelangelo consented to allow one of his pupils, to Burriocalcani,
to restore the piece, but not the leg, which may
give credence to the slung leg theory. Cal Kani's work
was eventually completed. He did restore the other elements that
have been broken, and it is now on display at
the Museu dela del Duomo in Florence, Italy. In the
(16:32):
fifteen fifties, michel Angelo began yet a third Pieta sculpture,
the Rondanini Pieta. He worked on this piece right up
until the week of his death in fifteen sixty four.
Like the Florentine Pieta, this work was intended for himself
rather than as a commission, and it breaks from the
structure of the earlier works, depicting this moment. Instead of
(16:55):
Mary holding her son in front of her, she stands
behind him, not supporting him. It almost looks from some
angles as though he is actually supporting her. And this
is a less refined and nuanced work than his two
other pietas. If you look at photographs of them, you
can tell obviously by comparison to the Roman Piazza, which
is just the spectacular, beautiful, realistic looking thing, this is
(17:18):
not at that level, And in part that was because
near the time of his death he hacked apart a
lot of this statue and intended to start over, and
he retained only one of Christ's arms from the original
part of his work. In ninety four, the sculpture was
loaned to the New York World's Fair, where it was
displayed as part of the Vatican Pavilion behind bulletproof glass.
(17:41):
More specifically, it was displayed behind seven sheets of bulletproof plexiglass,
each of which weighed about seven hundred pounds, which is
about three eights But just to get the sculpture to
New York from the Vatican took an incredible and careful effort.
Properly packing and trans warding this priceless piece was a
(18:01):
work of really careful engineering. A special committee called the
Vatican Pavilion Transport Committee was formed to address this task,
and one of the challenges involved here was that no
one really knew for certain precisely how delicate or fragile
or strong the statue was. At this point it had
been sitting in the Vatican for hundreds of years, and
(18:22):
there was a danger of internal fissures in the marble
that couldn't be seen, uh just from external examination, but
that could cause it to crack if it was bumped
or moved in the wrong way. When the piece had
been moved within the Vatican roughly two centuries prior to
this New York adventure, the left hand of the Virgin
Mary had suffered damage, so there was a very real
(18:44):
awareness of the danger involved in an overseas voyage. Radiologists
from Eastman Kodak were called in to make films of
the Pieta, and the marble was determined to be perfect,
although X rays did clearly show pins that had been
used to repair the damaged hand. Just the same, the
engineers working on the packaging approached the job with the
(19:04):
assumption that there were indeed fissures, so they designed the
most shockproof ride that they possibly could. There were three
nesting cases initially made for the job. The exterior case
was steel and inside that were two wooden cases, and
inside those was the pie top and the weight of
the cases. The statue and all of the packing materials
(19:25):
had to be carefully calculated to ensure that as the
parcel traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on a ship, any
shock would be at an absolute minimum, and that all
physical extensions of the arts of the pieces that are
separate away from the main central piece would be carefully
cradled and supported, with the void spaces carefully managed and braced.
(19:47):
If you have access to j Store, one of my
sources on this is a very fantastic and very technical
article about all of this, which includes tables of calculation
for static stress and all kinds of other testing laid
out in graph and table form. So if you're interested
in the nitty gritty of the engineering around this, I
highly recommend you go take a peek at that. To
(20:08):
test the design, a plaster replica of another Michelangelo statue, Moses,
was used to perform drop tests from heights ranging from
a hundred and seven to two hundred and sixty centimeters
in similar packaging. The combination of nesting cases and loose
phone fill proved successful in this testing. Compression testing was
(20:28):
also performed. Eventually, the second inner case was abandoned to
enable the use of more phone polystyrene, which added both
cushion and buoyancy should things go awry at sea. I
can't imagine how stressed I would be if I were
one of the people tasked with figuring this out. Why
are you doing this? It made me stress just reading
(20:50):
this guy and this the article I mentioned was written
by one of the engineers that worked on this, and
it made me stress just reading his description of it,
even though he seemed very like, Okay, we're solving these problems,
we're figuring it out, we're being meticulous and thorough and careful,
but oh it was stressful. Uh So the packing procedure
to actually get the sculpture into this casing was just
(21:11):
as carefully planned as the design of the packaging itself.
So for that previously broken hand that we mentioned, each
of the digits uh was wrapped in elastic bandage individually,
and then they carefully packed foam polystyrene in the gaps
between the fingers, and then the whole hand was wrapped again.
(21:32):
That's just one example of sort of the care that
they were taking. And the assembly of the wooden crate
was carefully choreographed, like they had an exact number of
stages in order of stages that like, every piece had
to be put together as the sculpture was going into
the crate. Uh. And at multiple stages the foam polystyrene
(21:54):
which was in the form of these dilute beads, was added.
And again there is more and more more detail of
this extraordinarily complex and careful effort in the article, which
I can't stop talking about to everyone because I'm in
love with that article. The exterior steel case was painted
white with blue markings and orange on top, because that's
(22:15):
the most easy to see color at sea. The case
was then escorted extremely slowly on trucks to the dock.
Police escorted it there, and it was cabled to the
deck of the transport ship with extreme care and precision.
And that journey across the ocean, like to get to
the docks, to get to the ship, to get across
the ocean to get to New York, was just incredibly kind. Uh.
(22:39):
That engineer that wrote that article was saying, we did
all this work, and thankfully our work, like our our
skills were never really tested, because at no point did
the parcel ever shift like drop unprepared more than a
third of a centimeter so really all of that engineering effort,
they were all happy to do it and they were
(22:59):
glad it was never we put to the test. But
we don't know if they really, like did everything perfect,
Like if it had fallen, we don't know still if
it would have survived or not. Well in the sea
is also the sea moves a lot. There. I saw
a terrifying photograph of this case just strapped to the
(23:20):
deck of the ship like it wasn't inside it was
And that was all part of like the plan because
it was waterproof, and it was determined that that was
a safer way to do it than to put it
in a cargo hold. But oh my god, it was
so stressful to look at these pictures. The p h
I was not the only art that was sent to
(23:41):
New York by the Vatican. It traveled along with an
even older sculpture, The Good Shepherd, But the p h
I was really the star of the show. It was
displayed against a blue lip background surrounded by vertical strings
of votive lights. Millions of people visited the pavilions to
view it, and you can find photograp grafts and home
movies taking up of the display online. Yeah, there are
(24:04):
lots of those available. If you just do an Internet
search for Pieta New York World's Fair, you'll instantly see
just dozens and dozens of in many cases really beautifully
taken photographs of how it was displayed. And the World's
Fair appearance of the Roman Piezza was so incredibly popular
that the Vaticans started receiving a steady stream of requests
(24:26):
for the statue to be loaned for other events. And
overwhelmed by all of this correspondence and unwilling to take
the risk of having this prize work of art on
a prolonged tour, the Vatican ended up issuing a statement
that michel Angelo's Pieta would stay in St. Peter's permanently
once it returned home. Although the no travel announcement was
(24:47):
made in part to keep the Pietas safe, trouble still
befell the statue in nineteen seventy two. Uh And this
was originally the only thing I was going to talk about,
but obviously I got interested in lots of other stuff
along the way. Uh So, while visiting St. Peter's Basilica
in nineties two, a thirty three year old Hungarian man
named Laslow toss, jumped over an altar railing and attacked
(25:11):
the pieta. He was able to hit the statue twelve
times with a hammer. Mary's left arm and hand were damaged.
The arm was completely severed off, and her nose was
broken into three parts. Her left eyelid, head and neck
were also damaged, and when the attack was over, more
than one hundred fragments had been knocked from the statue.
Poth was subdued by tourists and security guards and he
(25:33):
was taken away. He yelled throughout the incident, I am
Jesus Christ. Christ has risen from the dead. He went
on to claim that God had told him to destroy
Mary's image because he, as Laslow slash Christ, is eternal,
he could have no mother. There was a great deal
of debate about how to repair the statue, and in
(25:56):
fact whether it should be repaired at all. There were
plenty of art historians making the case that it should
be left in its damaged state as sort of a
historical record of the attack. Eventually, however, the decision was
made to perform a thorough and careful restoration which would
leave no obvious visual clues as to what had happened.
(26:17):
Over the course of five months, fragments and pieces were
identified and cataloged. Once that process was complete, a lab
was set up around the statue so it could be
worked on without removing it from the chapel, and a
combination of an invisible glue and marble powder UH was
used as a fixative, and restorers painstakingly placed each broken
(26:40):
piece back into position. And they didn't even actually have
every missing piece, which they knew based on their months
of inventory work that they had done prior to reassembly.
I'm so angry. I know, I know. This is the
part where of like, oh, this did get sad at
the end of a couple of reasons. One missing piece
(27:01):
did arrive in an anonymous parcel from the United States
of visiting tourists who had witnessed the attack took one
of the pieces home, but then mailed it back over
feeling guilt over the superstitious souvenir. Many other tourists took
shards as well, which were never never returned. And I
would like to say, what is wrong with you? Yeah,
I as I was thinking about it, UH writing up
(27:24):
these notes, I was just thinking about how many tiny
pieces of the Pieta are spread no telling where throughout
the globe, which is just an oddly shocking thought to me. Fortunately,
a mold of the piazza had also been made before
this attack happened, and using that the remaining missing pieces
were recreated and replaced. So after ten months of research
(27:47):
and restoration, so remember it took five months just to
do the cataloging and then roughly another five to do
the actual reassembly, the sculpture that had made michel Angelo
famous was back on display for public viewings, though once again,
as it had been at the World Fair, it was
placed behind protective bulletproof glass and it still is. As
(28:07):
for Laslow taught, his story is patchy and sad. At
the time of the attack, he was a former geologist,
unemployed at the time of the incident, and deemed to
be mentally unstable. He claimed, as he shouted during the
assault on the Pieta to beat Jesus Christ and sometimes Michaelangelo.
And I want to clarify that my what is wrong
with you is about nondisturbed people who took pieces of
(28:30):
a century old piece of art home with them. Yeah,
that was what I presumed you. I just wanted to
make sure because I know somebody's going to write us
an email about it. And I'm talking about the tourists
who took pieces of at home. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Like I said, I just imagined how many tiny pieces
are spread throughout the world when they should be back
with statue. But uh yeah, talks. Story is continues to
(28:54):
be sad. Uh. In the years prior to this violent outburst,
he had moved from Hungary to Australia. Although he did
not speak any English, his degree as a geologist was
not recognized in Australia and so he ended up having
to work factory jobs. He did, in fact, try to
unionize some of those jobs, and he worked on that
until he was in a violent fight in nineteen sixty seven,
(29:17):
and in that fight he fractured his skull. He vanished
for some time after that injury, and then he would
turn up in familiar spots, though only briefly, before venturing
to Italy in nineteen seventy two. And it sounds like
the people that knew him found him to be very
different when he reappeared than he had been prior to
that injury. No criminal charges were ever filed against him.
(29:37):
He was, and said, instead sent to a psychiatric institution
for two years. When he was released in nineteen seventy five,
he was deported back to Australia. His story goes cold
after that. It's inspired various creative works, and there are
certainly corners of the Internet where tall tales of sightings
and theories about his life after he left Europe just
(29:58):
abound it. It appears that tough all but vanished once
he got back to Australia. Yeah, we just there is
like no thread of what happened to him after that. Uh,
troubling on a variety of levels. Um, So we don't
know if he could still be alive, if he you know,
(30:19):
went on to let a completely different life, if he
lives a life of anonymity. We just have no idea.
It always seemed to me reading about this because I remember,
I mean, I was born in the very early seventies,
so I remember this was an event that was talked
about a lot in my family. My mother's side of
the family particularly is very devout Roman Catholic and and
(30:42):
this was something that would come up in conversation often.
And I remember, like I always had questions about the perpetrator,
and they never had answers but and now that I
have done a little bit more research, it appears no
one has answers, and it always seems sort of cruel
that when he got out of a mental institution, he
was deported and there was no further care or concern
(31:03):
about his treatment. Uh. But yeah, so we don't know.
What we do know is that Michelangelo's Pieta is still
currently on display in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. You
can go visit it, and if you can't go visit
it in person, like I said, there is a Pieta
virtual tour that you can visit online and zoom in
and see it fairly up close. There's also been a
(31:25):
number of just spectacular photographs taken of it over the years,
so it is easy to to look at and examine
and appreciate the incredible work for yourself. It's it's one
of those pieces of sculpture that, um when you hear
people talk about it, even people that are not religious
speak about it, in incredible having a just an incredible
(31:46):
sense of a sort of otherworldly experience because it is
so just indescribably beautiful and sort of moving. So it's
a piece of love. I think it's gorgeous. I love
to talk about a little bit of art here and there. Yeah,
I heard you also have some cool listener mail. I do.
I have some fun listener mail. This one comes from
(32:07):
our listener, Joshua. He says, Hello, Tracy and Holly, thank
you for your work on stuff you missed in history.
I've enjoyed it for a couple of years and have
dived into the archives in search of little treasures. I
just listened to the Mind Disaster episode in which someone
lamented about how most requests are about wars and disasters.
That was me. Yeah, that was Tracy. Some of it
may be morbid fascination, but some of it, and I
(32:29):
speak for myself. Here is also a look back on
what we survived and when humanity has shown its best.
Even in the Mind Disaster, the countryside of two countries
showed up to help. Also, those who do not learn
the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Besides,
I also used a little gem of knowledge glean from
your show to win a battle in Super Fight. So
he says, bring on the shipwrecks, the disasters, the wars
(32:50):
and accidents, Bring on the plagues, the disappearances, the mythology,
and the crimes, because in each one of those we
see many stand to make something wrong into something right.
But what was really interesting is that we also got
a parcel with this letter, and it says, as a
thank you for all you've done for free for me,
I give you something to enjoy for yourself and a
few friends. I call it the hand Huggy the mitt
for lovers, and it is this ingenious and wondrous thing
(33:14):
which is a little sort of pocket with a cuff
on it so you can you and your beloved can
hold hands in the winter and nobody has cold hands
you can. It fits two hands together and that way
everybody's got warmth. I love this idea. It's so cute.
Uh If if you want to check it out, you
can hand Huggy dot com. And his mother, who works
(33:37):
at Eulogia Studio, made the prototype and now he produces them.
I love it. It's so cute. We also got some
really beautiful postcards which I won't read, but I'm going
to put them on our social feed so people can
see them. From Sonja. We got a beautiful one from Canada,
and we got another lovely one from I think it
(33:58):
is Lynda aid at Lindy. I think it's a Lindy
and I'm sorry. It's once again a case where she
probably wrote it very leegibly, but the postal service has
put marks over it. And this is a postcard from
Cape Town. So thank you for all of our listeners
that send us wonderful fun things. I'm totally using my
hand huggy, that's for sure, and I wanted to mention
(34:20):
he Joseph talked about how this came about because it's
considered like a pocket for lovers. But when I was
sharing it with Julie Douglas, who works here with us,
her first thought was that her little girl would love
it because little kids like the whole hands at their parents.
But it's cold out and they know want cold hands.
So thank you, thank you, Thank you too, Joshua. I
really appreciate it as though, Tracy. So if you would
(34:40):
like to write to us, you can do that. We
are in History podcast a house to works dot com.
We're also at Facebook dot com, slash misst in history
at misst in History, hindress dot com, slash mist in History,
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visit us, you can do so at misston history dot com.
We have an archive I of every episode of the
(35:01):
show that has ever happened. We also have show notes
for any of the episodes that feature Tracy and myself,
and occasionally there's another goodie here or there. If you
would like to do some additional research, you can visit
our parents site, which is how stuff works dot com.
So we encourage you come and visit us at how
to works dot com and missed in history dot com
(35:24):
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
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Build it Beautiful. Join me Julie Douglas for the Stuff
of Life, a sound scaped podcast that explores everything that
makes us human that nothing is too beautiful to happen
(00:21):
in life. Look for a new episode every Wednesday in
iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm
Crazy V Wilson, and today we're going to talk about
what is perhaps the most famous of all images in
Christian are are definitely one of the most famous, uh,
the Piata. And I was originally going to research just
the attack on Michelangelo's piazza in nine two, and we
are going to talk about that. But as I got
(01:06):
to researching that, I ended up down this sort of
wonderful rabbit hole of this image in art history is
depicted by many artists over time, and specifically the ones
that Michelangelo worked on, because there were more than one.
And we will talk about all of those. So this
episode ended up really being a little bit of a
smartest board. There is a little bit of light art history.
(01:27):
There is a little bit about michel Angelo, but we're
not really doing a biography of him. We're just talking
about these works of art and kind of some of
his life surrounding them, not in great depth, and a
bit about art defacement more than one in fact. And
we're also gonna touch on the great care that is
needed to move a sculpture of the nature of the
(01:48):
famous piazza that michel Angelo worked on. So we're getting
a little bit of all of that in today's episode.
Just in case you don't know the Pieta and the
jed world senses any depiction or representation of the Virgin
Mary morning over Christ's dead body. I don't know why
(02:09):
I suddenly was like that sounded so bleak, right, Well,
it is bleak. They're very sad, you should yeah. Well,
obviously the word derives from the Latin word for pity. However,
the use of this word to apply to these pieces
comes after they start to appear in art. Yeah, we
(02:31):
see them starting, these images of of Mary holding Christ
after the crucifixion around the thirteenth century, but that word
doesn't really come in in that sense until I think
the sixteen hundreds. So another thing that's interesting is that
although this is a significant moment in the Christian religion,
this scene, in this this imagery, that scene actually isn't
(02:54):
present in the Gospels, Like there's not a specific moment
where they describe this. Uh. The Christ crucifixion is in there.
The descent from the cross, or the deposition as it's
often called uh, lamentation, Christ being laid on the ground,
and the intombment are all there in the New Testament,
but there really is no description of Mary cradling her son.
(03:17):
Yet it became a really important image. An a lecture
given by the Right Reverend Lord Harry's at the Museum
of London in March, the speaker outlines the factors that
he believes contribute to the origin of the pacha as
a significant scene in religious art, despite it not actually
being something that's ever mentioned in scripture. Harry's describes the
(03:39):
development of devotional images versus narrative images, and whereas narrative
religious art clearly shows a story playing out, devotional imagery
takes these images out of their narrative context, and this
came about in the thirteen hundreds in relation to an
intense religious reverence. These images were basically so that the
(04:00):
devoted could fixate and think on the suffering of Christ
as a part of personal prayer and meditation. So, as
part of a group of common devotional images to come
out of Germany, specifically during the hundreds, the scene of
the pat I emerged. This is due to the fact
that Mary, as a religious figure was gaining a greater position,
so her suffering too was to be contemplated in devotionals.
(04:23):
Mary's pain and lament over Christ's death had long been
a part of religious writings before the visual of this
moment of grief became a standard. There are three main
types of Pieta. The first is the early German, in
which the torso of Christ is upright, with the head,
arms and legs at diagonal placements. In relation to the torso,
(04:45):
Christ is often portrayed in a smaller size compared to Mary.
This hearkens back to his child state. Sometimes when you
see these, they're a bit jarring because he looks like
an adult man, but he's very small in relation to Mary.
Uh and his self ring is usually depicted in in
great depth and with clarity. He looks like he's in
terrible pain. Mary, for her part, is often shown in
(05:07):
deep sorrow. Her face is often contorted with grief, and
the first of these images in this style date back
to again the early undreds. The second type, which came
about in the late fifteenth century, is characterized by Christ's
body depicted with a continuous curve. Mary's grief is often
more restrained in these, and she often holds her hands
(05:28):
in a prayer position rather than holding the body of
her son. And the third type, which also dates back
to the fifteenth century, is characterized by the body of
Christ in a horizontal, usually straighter position, and these often
feature more people in the tableau's not just Christ and Mary,
and there's often a peaceful landscape in the background, and
(05:49):
sometimes there is an architectural feature. Christ wounds are frequently,
though not always, less of a focus. It's a little
bit of a softer image, it's not so fraught with grief.
Between thirteen hundred and fifteen hundred, personal iconography became a
lot more common. Previously to that art had been more
of a public concept, so during this period, works of
(06:12):
art representing the Pieta became more prevalent in people's private
homes instead of just out in public spaces. So it
is a little bit early on, but in the next
segment it runs kind of long, and we're going to
talk about the three different versions of the Pieta created
by Michelangelo. So we're gonna pause and do our sponsor
break now so we can keep all of that chunk together.
(06:33):
So to get back to the story and discussion of
Michelangelo's work. In the fourteen nineties, Michelangelo, still very young
at this point, traveled from Florence to Venice and to
Bologna and eventually ended up in Rome. In fourteen, when
Michelangelo was commissioned to create his famous Pieta, he was
only twenty four. The contract was signed on August. That
(06:58):
document is actually now part of the Attican's collection. The
work was intended for the funeral chapel of St. Petronia
in St. Peter's Basilica. The person who requested that art
was the French ambassador, Cardinal bill Air de la Grela.
That piece would be part of the decor of the
chapel where he was to be interred and where funeral
(07:19):
services would be given for other people as well. Once
tasked with this piece, uh the artist Michelangelo set out
to find the most perfect block of marble he could find.
He found one eventually, which he claimed had no faults,
and he set to work. Michelangelo worked on Jean de
Blare's commission from hundred and he worked in the round,
(07:41):
so he was able to access all sides of the
piece at once, and the finished sculpture waste three tons.
Blaire had died in he did not get to see
the completed work. This sculpture, which a lot of our
listeners have probably seen at least in pictures of Spectacular,
will include a link to the show notes with a
virtual tour of it online. It's really unique in its peacefulness.
(08:05):
Mary appears to be very young. It's an appearance that
Michelangelo attributed to her purity when people criticized his choice
to show her as a youth. The torso wound of
Christ is minimized, and there is, above almost all else
the sense of serenity to the work. Rather than suffering,
Mary is not directly touching the body of Christ in
(08:28):
this sculpture. There's actually a cloth carved in between her
hand and the side of his torso where she's supporting him,
and this denotes the sacred nature of his physical body.
The relative sizes of the two figures is also something
to note. While her head is proportional to her son's
in the sculpture, Mary's body is larger, unlike in the
(08:49):
early German style of pH i works, it appears to
be more of the visual and logistical need. In Michelangelo's sculpture,
Mary's body needed to be large enough to support her son,
and the depth of the cloth draped around Mary gives
the sculpture an incredibly realistic effect, but also hides the
size disparity. And this commission Peace was also intended to
(09:12):
sit above the altar in the Funeral Chapter chapel, so
part of the size disparity was possibly to add to
a visual illusion both of Mary offering up Christ just
as mourners were offering up their deceased loved ones uh
and also if she had been a normal size in
the sculpture, like if you were standing near it, uh,
she then would have appeared unrealistically tiny. Once the sculpture
(09:35):
was placed in its intended position in the chapel, and
we know michel Angelo kind of thought about these things
and other sculptures. It comes up. People will talk about
the David sometimes and how it was meant to be
displayed and how the proportions were affected. So we know
that he thought about this kind of thing, uh, and
that you know he was keenly aware of how I
and sightline and presentation would affect the need for size.
(09:59):
This was the only one of michel Angelo's sculptures that
he carved his full name into. Allegedly, he had overheard
visitors attributing the work to another artist after it had
been installed in the chapel, and so he made his
mark on the ribbon draped across Mary's chest by night.
Later on, though, he regretted having done that, and he
vowed to never again put his name on his work
(10:21):
because he found it to be prideful. And this sculpture
was so well received that it was a really significant
factor in the launch of michel Angelo's career. This was
again very early on, he was in his twenties. Immediately
upon its reveal, this was seen as a masterpiece, and
other artists flocked to the chapel to see it. And
this is sort of one of those wonderfully rare cases
(10:43):
of an artist actually appreciate being appreciated in his time
rather than after it because michel Angelo lived another sixt
or four years after completing the Pietas, so he was
able to see the effect his work had on people
and how beloved it was from basically day one of
his existence. It kind of made him a rock star.
So the Pieta that you think of when you hear
the name Michelangelo, that one that we have just been
(11:05):
talking about. It's his most famous, but not his only
depiction of that moment. His second Piazza, also known as
the Florentine Pieta, and the deposition was worked on over
a number of years, beginning in fifty seven, and this
piece was not commissioned. It was intended by the artist
to adorn his own final resting place, and as such
(11:26):
was something of a passion project. The Florentine Pichi is
kind of a puzzler. It's meeting is not immediately clear.
Both the stage of the Christ's narrative and he was
included in the tableau have really been debated by art
historians at great length. In the narrative context, some elements
of the piece indicate that it's a representation of the deposition,
(11:47):
Others hint that it's more of a Pieta, and yet
others lead people to interpretation that it's supposed to be
the entombment of Christ. It's even possible that Michelangelo intended
to blend multiple narratives into this one work. And there
are four figures in this sculpture, so already we're at
a departure from the classic marry in Christ set up.
(12:10):
One is Christ, one is the Virgin Mary, and another
person is Mary Magdalene. But the fourth figure is where
the confusion and the variant interpretations really come into play.
This fourth figure is a hooded figure and its male
and stands above the other three. And it is not
entirely clear to everyone who's supposed to be. I will
say when I say that, there are people who believe
(12:32):
very firmly that they know who it's supposed to be,
but debate continues. It could be the biblical figure Joseph
of Arimathea, who provided his own intended tomb as the
resting place for Jesus after the crucifixion. It could be Nicodemus,
the Pharisee, who appears in the Gospel of John and
assists in the burial of Jesus. The Nicodemus interpretation is
(12:55):
a common one. If the figure is Joseph of aramassay
that that figure combined with the presence of Mary Magdalen,
would suggest that this is an intombant piece, as those
two figures are traditionally more associated with art depicting that
phase of the narrative. If it is Nicodemus, it may
hint more strongly at being the deposition, as both Joseph
(13:16):
and Nicodemus are featured in that element in the narrative
traditionally in art, but Nicodemus is not normally featured in
depictions of the entombment. In fifty five, michel Angelo attempted
to destroy the Florentine pat He was successful in breaking
off Christ's left leg and arm, and he chipped other sections.
(13:38):
And why he did this is unclear, but there are
a number of theories, and the truth may lie in
some combination of several or all of them. One is
that the artist was troubled by a particularly problematic vein
in the marble, which frustrated him to the point of despair,
and he just got angry and wanted to smatch it.
Anybody who's done something creative can know that those moments happen.
(14:00):
Another is that his servant had been nagging him to
finish the piece, which made him irritated with the whole
enterprise again to the point where he was just frustrated
and angry. Those two reasons were given by Michelangelo himself
when pressed on the matter in the account written by
one of his contemporaries, Georgia Vasari. The third and fourth
theories and exactly what happened are a little bit more involved.
(14:23):
So the first of these involves the placement of Christ's leg,
which is slung across his mother's lap, and that this
was a problematic symbol that michel Angelo believed could be misconstrued,
or that he felt that he hadn't properly captured. So
at this point in our history, a leg placed in
another's lap held a sexual meaning. It suggested that the
(14:43):
pair involved in this crossing of legs across laps were
romantically or erotically entwined, and for Christ to have his
leg in his mother's lap, though actually easily fit in
with the symbolism of Mary representing the church as the
bride of Christ. So this was not necessarily an issue,
and there was existing art at the time that included
the leg of Christ draped across Mary as he was
(15:06):
taken down in the deposition, and and as in a
state where the body is not supported by the self,
so it's it's drooping and it's falling. It is possible, however, though,
that michel Angelo was concerned that there could be confusion,
and so he intended to alter this piece by first
removing the leg, so it was less of a destruction
(15:27):
situation and more of a let's a race and start
over and fix some pieces. The fourth theory involves the
figure again. It's often been discussed that the Nicodemus figure
was also intended to be a self portrait of michel Angelo.
As Nicodemus had connections to sculpting, this would have been
a pretty natural move on the part of the artist,
(15:47):
but michel Angelo had become more involved with the school
of belief known as Nicodemism, which didn't wish to separate
from the Catholic Church, but also held beliefs more in
line with Protestant values. He may have intended to remove
his likeness as Nicodemus from the work in order to
avoid suspicion that he was actually a religious dissenter. Eventually,
(16:10):
Michelangelo consented to allow one of his pupils, to Burriocalcani,
to restore the piece, but not the leg, which may
give credence to the slung leg theory. Cal Kani's work
was eventually completed. He did restore the other elements that
have been broken, and it is now on display at
the Museu dela del Duomo in Florence, Italy. In the
(16:32):
fifteen fifties, michel Angelo began yet a third Pieta sculpture,
the Rondanini Pieta. He worked on this piece right up
until the week of his death in fifteen sixty four.
Like the Florentine Pieta, this work was intended for himself
rather than as a commission, and it breaks from the
structure of the earlier works, depicting this moment. Instead of
(16:55):
Mary holding her son in front of her, she stands
behind him, not supporting him. It almost looks from some
angles as though he is actually supporting her. And this
is a less refined and nuanced work than his two
other pietas. If you look at photographs of them, you
can tell obviously by comparison to the Roman Piazza, which
is just the spectacular, beautiful, realistic looking thing, this is
(17:18):
not at that level, And in part that was because
near the time of his death he hacked apart a
lot of this statue and intended to start over, and
he retained only one of Christ's arms from the original
part of his work. In ninety four, the sculpture was
loaned to the New York World's Fair, where it was
displayed as part of the Vatican Pavilion behind bulletproof glass.
(17:41):
More specifically, it was displayed behind seven sheets of bulletproof plexiglass,
each of which weighed about seven hundred pounds, which is
about three eights But just to get the sculpture to
New York from the Vatican took an incredible and careful effort.
Properly packing and trans warding this priceless piece was a
(18:01):
work of really careful engineering. A special committee called the
Vatican Pavilion Transport Committee was formed to address this task,
and one of the challenges involved here was that no
one really knew for certain precisely how delicate or fragile
or strong the statue was. At this point it had
been sitting in the Vatican for hundreds of years, and
(18:22):
there was a danger of internal fissures in the marble
that couldn't be seen, uh just from external examination, but
that could cause it to crack if it was bumped
or moved in the wrong way. When the piece had
been moved within the Vatican roughly two centuries prior to
this New York adventure, the left hand of the Virgin
Mary had suffered damage, so there was a very real
(18:44):
awareness of the danger involved in an overseas voyage. Radiologists
from Eastman Kodak were called in to make films of
the Pieta, and the marble was determined to be perfect,
although X rays did clearly show pins that had been
used to repair the damaged hand. Just the same, the
engineers working on the packaging approached the job with the
(19:04):
assumption that there were indeed fissures, so they designed the
most shockproof ride that they possibly could. There were three
nesting cases initially made for the job. The exterior case
was steel and inside that were two wooden cases, and
inside those was the pie top and the weight of
the cases. The statue and all of the packing materials
(19:25):
had to be carefully calculated to ensure that as the
parcel traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on a ship, any
shock would be at an absolute minimum, and that all
physical extensions of the arts of the pieces that are
separate away from the main central piece would be carefully
cradled and supported, with the void spaces carefully managed and braced.
(19:47):
If you have access to j Store, one of my
sources on this is a very fantastic and very technical
article about all of this, which includes tables of calculation
for static stress and all kinds of other testing laid
out in graph and table form. So if you're interested
in the nitty gritty of the engineering around this, I
highly recommend you go take a peek at that. To
(20:08):
test the design, a plaster replica of another Michelangelo statue, Moses,
was used to perform drop tests from heights ranging from
a hundred and seven to two hundred and sixty centimeters
in similar packaging. The combination of nesting cases and loose
phone fill proved successful in this testing. Compression testing was
(20:28):
also performed. Eventually, the second inner case was abandoned to
enable the use of more phone polystyrene, which added both
cushion and buoyancy should things go awry at sea. I
can't imagine how stressed I would be if I were
one of the people tasked with figuring this out. Why
are you doing this? It made me stress just reading
(20:50):
this guy and this the article I mentioned was written
by one of the engineers that worked on this, and
it made me stress just reading his description of it,
even though he seemed very like, Okay, we're solving these problems,
we're figuring it out, we're being meticulous and thorough and careful,
but oh it was stressful. Uh So the packing procedure
to actually get the sculpture into this casing was just
(21:11):
as carefully planned as the design of the packaging itself.
So for that previously broken hand that we mentioned, each
of the digits uh was wrapped in elastic bandage individually,
and then they carefully packed foam polystyrene in the gaps
between the fingers, and then the whole hand was wrapped again.
(21:32):
That's just one example of sort of the care that
they were taking. And the assembly of the wooden crate
was carefully choreographed, like they had an exact number of
stages in order of stages that like, every piece had
to be put together as the sculpture was going into
the crate. Uh. And at multiple stages the foam polystyrene
(21:54):
which was in the form of these dilute beads, was added.
And again there is more and more more detail of
this extraordinarily complex and careful effort in the article, which
I can't stop talking about to everyone because I'm in
love with that article. The exterior steel case was painted
white with blue markings and orange on top, because that's
(22:15):
the most easy to see color at sea. The case
was then escorted extremely slowly on trucks to the dock.
Police escorted it there, and it was cabled to the
deck of the transport ship with extreme care and precision.
And that journey across the ocean, like to get to
the docks, to get to the ship, to get across
the ocean to get to New York, was just incredibly kind. Uh.
(22:39):
That engineer that wrote that article was saying, we did
all this work, and thankfully our work, like our our
skills were never really tested, because at no point did
the parcel ever shift like drop unprepared more than a
third of a centimeter so really all of that engineering effort,
they were all happy to do it and they were
(22:59):
glad it was never we put to the test. But
we don't know if they really, like did everything perfect,
Like if it had fallen, we don't know still if
it would have survived or not. Well in the sea
is also the sea moves a lot. There. I saw
a terrifying photograph of this case just strapped to the
(23:20):
deck of the ship like it wasn't inside it was
And that was all part of like the plan because
it was waterproof, and it was determined that that was
a safer way to do it than to put it
in a cargo hold. But oh my god, it was
so stressful to look at these pictures. The p h
I was not the only art that was sent to
(23:41):
New York by the Vatican. It traveled along with an
even older sculpture, The Good Shepherd, But the p h
I was really the star of the show. It was
displayed against a blue lip background surrounded by vertical strings
of votive lights. Millions of people visited the pavilions to
view it, and you can find photograp grafts and home
movies taking up of the display online. Yeah, there are
(24:04):
lots of those available. If you just do an Internet
search for Pieta New York World's Fair, you'll instantly see
just dozens and dozens of in many cases really beautifully
taken photographs of how it was displayed. And the World's
Fair appearance of the Roman Piezza was so incredibly popular
that the Vaticans started receiving a steady stream of requests
(24:26):
for the statue to be loaned for other events. And
overwhelmed by all of this correspondence and unwilling to take
the risk of having this prize work of art on
a prolonged tour, the Vatican ended up issuing a statement
that michel Angelo's Pieta would stay in St. Peter's permanently
once it returned home. Although the no travel announcement was
(24:47):
made in part to keep the Pietas safe, trouble still
befell the statue in nineteen seventy two. Uh And this
was originally the only thing I was going to talk about,
but obviously I got interested in lots of other stuff
along the way. Uh So, while visiting St. Peter's Basilica
in nineties two, a thirty three year old Hungarian man
named Laslow toss, jumped over an altar railing and attacked
(25:11):
the pieta. He was able to hit the statue twelve
times with a hammer. Mary's left arm and hand were damaged.
The arm was completely severed off, and her nose was
broken into three parts. Her left eyelid, head and neck
were also damaged, and when the attack was over, more
than one hundred fragments had been knocked from the statue.
Poth was subdued by tourists and security guards and he
(25:33):
was taken away. He yelled throughout the incident, I am
Jesus Christ. Christ has risen from the dead. He went
on to claim that God had told him to destroy
Mary's image because he, as Laslow slash Christ, is eternal,
he could have no mother. There was a great deal
of debate about how to repair the statue, and in
(25:56):
fact whether it should be repaired at all. There were
plenty of art historians making the case that it should
be left in its damaged state as sort of a
historical record of the attack. Eventually, however, the decision was
made to perform a thorough and careful restoration which would
leave no obvious visual clues as to what had happened.
(26:17):
Over the course of five months, fragments and pieces were
identified and cataloged. Once that process was complete, a lab
was set up around the statue so it could be
worked on without removing it from the chapel, and a
combination of an invisible glue and marble powder UH was
used as a fixative, and restorers painstakingly placed each broken
(26:40):
piece back into position. And they didn't even actually have
every missing piece, which they knew based on their months
of inventory work that they had done prior to reassembly.
I'm so angry. I know, I know. This is the
part where of like, oh, this did get sad at
the end of a couple of reasons. One missing piece
(27:01):
did arrive in an anonymous parcel from the United States
of visiting tourists who had witnessed the attack took one
of the pieces home, but then mailed it back over
feeling guilt over the superstitious souvenir. Many other tourists took
shards as well, which were never never returned. And I
would like to say, what is wrong with you? Yeah,
I as I was thinking about it, UH writing up
(27:24):
these notes, I was just thinking about how many tiny
pieces of the Pieta are spread no telling where throughout
the globe, which is just an oddly shocking thought to me. Fortunately,
a mold of the piazza had also been made before
this attack happened, and using that the remaining missing pieces
were recreated and replaced. So after ten months of research
(27:47):
and restoration, so remember it took five months just to
do the cataloging and then roughly another five to do
the actual reassembly, the sculpture that had made michel Angelo
famous was back on display for public viewings, though once again,
as it had been at the World Fair, it was
placed behind protective bulletproof glass and it still is. As
(28:07):
for Laslow taught, his story is patchy and sad. At
the time of the attack, he was a former geologist,
unemployed at the time of the incident, and deemed to
be mentally unstable. He claimed, as he shouted during the
assault on the Pieta to beat Jesus Christ and sometimes Michaelangelo.
And I want to clarify that my what is wrong
with you is about nondisturbed people who took pieces of
(28:30):
a century old piece of art home with them. Yeah,
that was what I presumed you. I just wanted to
make sure because I know somebody's going to write us
an email about it. And I'm talking about the tourists
who took pieces of at home. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Like I said, I just imagined how many tiny pieces
are spread throughout the world when they should be back
with statue. But uh yeah, talks. Story is continues to
(28:54):
be sad. Uh. In the years prior to this violent outburst,
he had moved from Hungary to Australia. Although he did
not speak any English, his degree as a geologist was
not recognized in Australia and so he ended up having
to work factory jobs. He did, in fact, try to
unionize some of those jobs, and he worked on that
until he was in a violent fight in nineteen sixty seven,
(29:17):
and in that fight he fractured his skull. He vanished
for some time after that injury, and then he would
turn up in familiar spots, though only briefly, before venturing
to Italy in nineteen seventy two. And it sounds like
the people that knew him found him to be very
different when he reappeared than he had been prior to
that injury. No criminal charges were ever filed against him.
(29:37):
He was, and said, instead sent to a psychiatric institution
for two years. When he was released in nineteen seventy five,
he was deported back to Australia. His story goes cold
after that. It's inspired various creative works, and there are
certainly corners of the Internet where tall tales of sightings
and theories about his life after he left Europe just
(29:58):
abound it. It appears that tough all but vanished once
he got back to Australia. Yeah, we just there is
like no thread of what happened to him after that. Uh,
troubling on a variety of levels. Um, So we don't
know if he could still be alive, if he you know,
(30:19):
went on to let a completely different life, if he
lives a life of anonymity. We just have no idea.
It always seemed to me reading about this because I remember,
I mean, I was born in the very early seventies,
so I remember this was an event that was talked
about a lot in my family. My mother's side of
the family particularly is very devout Roman Catholic and and
(30:42):
this was something that would come up in conversation often.
And I remember, like I always had questions about the perpetrator,
and they never had answers but and now that I
have done a little bit more research, it appears no
one has answers, and it always seems sort of cruel
that when he got out of a mental institution, he
was deported and there was no further care or concern
(31:03):
about his treatment. Uh. But yeah, so we don't know.
What we do know is that Michelangelo's Pieta is still
currently on display in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. You
can go visit it, and if you can't go visit
it in person, like I said, there is a Pieta
virtual tour that you can visit online and zoom in
and see it fairly up close. There's also been a
(31:25):
number of just spectacular photographs taken of it over the years,
so it is easy to to look at and examine
and appreciate the incredible work for yourself. It's it's one
of those pieces of sculpture that, um when you hear
people talk about it, even people that are not religious
speak about it, in incredible having a just an incredible
(31:46):
sense of a sort of otherworldly experience because it is
so just indescribably beautiful and sort of moving. So it's
a piece of love. I think it's gorgeous. I love
to talk about a little bit of art here and there. Yeah,
I heard you also have some cool listener mail. I do.
I have some fun listener mail. This one comes from
(32:07):
our listener, Joshua. He says, Hello, Tracy and Holly, thank
you for your work on stuff you missed in history.
I've enjoyed it for a couple of years and have
dived into the archives in search of little treasures. I
just listened to the Mind Disaster episode in which someone
lamented about how most requests are about wars and disasters.
That was me. Yeah, that was Tracy. Some of it
may be morbid fascination, but some of it, and I
(32:29):
speak for myself. Here is also a look back on
what we survived and when humanity has shown its best.
Even in the Mind Disaster, the countryside of two countries
showed up to help. Also, those who do not learn
the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Besides,
I also used a little gem of knowledge glean from
your show to win a battle in Super Fight. So
he says, bring on the shipwrecks, the disasters, the wars
(32:50):
and accidents, Bring on the plagues, the disappearances, the mythology,
and the crimes, because in each one of those we
see many stand to make something wrong into something right.
But what was really interesting is that we also got
a parcel with this letter, and it says, as a
thank you for all you've done for free for me,
I give you something to enjoy for yourself and a
few friends. I call it the hand Huggy the mitt
for lovers, and it is this ingenious and wondrous thing
(33:14):
which is a little sort of pocket with a cuff
on it so you can you and your beloved can
hold hands in the winter and nobody has cold hands
you can. It fits two hands together and that way
everybody's got warmth. I love this idea. It's so cute.
Uh If if you want to check it out, you
can hand Huggy dot com. And his mother, who works
(33:37):
at Eulogia Studio, made the prototype and now he produces them.
I love it. It's so cute. We also got some
really beautiful postcards which I won't read, but I'm going
to put them on our social feed so people can
see them. From Sonja. We got a beautiful one from Canada,
and we got another lovely one from I think it
(33:58):
is Lynda aid at Lindy. I think it's a Lindy
and I'm sorry. It's once again a case where she
probably wrote it very leegibly, but the postal service has
put marks over it. And this is a postcard from
Cape Town. So thank you for all of our listeners
that send us wonderful fun things. I'm totally using my
hand huggy, that's for sure, and I wanted to mention
(34:20):
he Joseph talked about how this came about because it's
considered like a pocket for lovers. But when I was
sharing it with Julie Douglas, who works here with us,
her first thought was that her little girl would love
it because little kids like the whole hands at their parents.
But it's cold out and they know want cold hands.
So thank you, thank you, Thank you too, Joshua. I
really appreciate it as though, Tracy. So if you would
(34:40):
like to write to us, you can do that. We
are in History podcast a house to works dot com.
We're also at Facebook dot com, slash misst in history
at misst in History, hindress dot com, slash mist in History,
missed in History dot tumbler dot com and We're on
Instagram at mist in History. If he would like to
visit us, you can do so at misston history dot com.
We have an archive I of every episode of the
(35:01):
show that has ever happened. We also have show notes
for any of the episodes that feature Tracy and myself,
and occasionally there's another goodie here or there. If you
would like to do some additional research, you can visit
our parents site, which is how stuff works dot com.
So we encourage you come and visit us at how
to works dot com and missed in history dot com
(35:24):
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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