April 24, 2020 • 33 mins
This 2016 episode delves into Michelangelo's sculpture of Mary holding the deceased body of Christ. It's the most famous depiction of that moment in art, but 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 (00:02):
Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
(00:22):
as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift,
Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
(00:43):
and today we're going to talk about what is perhaps
the most famous of all images and Christian are are
definitely one of the most famous, uh, the Piata. And
I was originally going to research just the attack on
Micolandelo's piazza in two and we are going to talk
about that. But as I got to researching that, I
ended up down this sort of wonderful rabbit hole of
(01:04):
this image in art history is depicted by many artists
over time, and specifically the ones that michel Angelo 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. 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
(01:25):
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 famous Pieta that michel
Angelo worked on. So we're getting a little bit of
(01:47):
all of that in today's episode. Just in case you
don't know the Piata and the general sense is any
depiction or representation of the Virgin Mary morning over Christ's
dead by I don't know why. I suddenly was like
that sounded so bleak, right, Well, it is bleak. It's
(02:09):
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 see them
starting these images of of Merry holding Christ after the
(02:30):
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 present in the Gospels,
Like there's not a specific moment where they describe this. Uh.
(02:53):
The Christ crucifixion is in there, the descent from the cross,
or the deposition as it's off my all 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. Yet it became
a really important image. An a lecture given by the
(03:16):
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 Pieta as a significant scene in
religious art, despite it not actually being something that's ever
mentioned in scripture. Harry's describes the development of devotional images
versus narrative images, and whereas narrative religious art clearly shows
(03:40):
a story playing out, devotional imagery takes these images out
of their narrative context. And this came about in the
hundreds in relation to an intense religious reverence. These images
were basically so that the 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
(04:01):
common devotional images to come out of Germany, specifically during
their undreds, the scene of the Piata 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. Mary's pain and lament over
Christ's death had long been a part of religious writings
(04:22):
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, Christ is often portrayed in a
smaller size compared to Mary. This hearkens back to his
(04:44):
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 suffering
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 deep sorrow. Her face is often
contorted with grief, and the first of these images in
(05:05):
this style date back to again the early hundreds. 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 in a prayer position rather than
holding the body of her son. And the third type,
(05:28):
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. It's
not just Christ and Mary, and there's often a peaceful
landscape in the background, and sometimes there is an architectural feature.
Christ wounds are frequently, though not always, less of a focus.
(05:49):
It's a little bit of a softer image, it's not
so fraught with grief. Between thirteen hundred and fift hundred,
personal iconography became a lot more common pre es lee
to that art had been more of a public concept,
so during this period, works of art representing the Pieta
became more prevalent in people's private homes instead of just
(06:11):
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 into our sponsor break now so we can
keep all of that chunk together. In the fourteen nineties,
(06:36):
michel Angelo, still very young at this point, traveled from
Florence to Venice and to Bologna and eventually ended up
in Rome. In four when Michelangelo was commissioned to create
his famous Piety, he was only twenty four. The contract
was signed on August. That document is actually now part
(06:56):
of the Vaticans collection. The work was intended for the
funeral chapel of St. Petronia in St. Peter's Basilica. The
person who requested the art was the French ambassador, Cardinal
Bilair do la Grela. The piece would be part of
the decor of the chapel where he was to be
interred and where funeral services would be given for other
(07:18):
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 fift hundred,
and he worked in the round, so he was able
(07:39):
to access all sides of the piece at once, and
the finished sculpture waste three tons. Blaire had died in
so 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. Mary appears
(08:03):
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 this sculpture. There's
(08:26):
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 early German style
(08:47):
of Phi works, it appears to be more of a
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 sit above
(09:09):
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 was placed
(09:32):
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
(09:53):
presentation would affect the need for size. This was the
only one of Michelangelo's sculptures that carved as 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
(10:14):
having done that, and he vowed to never again put
his name on his work 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
(10:36):
chapel to see it. And this is sort of one
of those wonderfully rare cases of an artist actually appreciate
being appreciated in his time rather than after it, because
michel Angelo lived another sixty 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
(10:56):
a rock star. So the Pieta that you think of
when you hear the name Gelangelo, that one that we
have just been talking about. It's his most famous, but
not his only depiction of that moment. His second Pieta,
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
(11:19):
the artist to adorn his own final resting place, and
as such 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,
(11:39):
some elements of the piece indicate that it's a representation
of the deposition, 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
(12:02):
we're at a departure from the classic marry in Christ
set up. 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
(12:22):
is not entirely clear to everyone who it's supposed to be.
I will say when I say that there are people
who believe 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
(12:43):
could be Nicodemus, the Pharisee, who appears in the Gospel
of John and assists in the burial of Jesus. The
Nicodemus interpretation is a common one. If the figure is
Joseph of Arimathea, that that figure, combined with the presence
of Mary Magna Lynn would suggest that this is an
intombant piece, as those two figures are traditionally more associated
(13:05):
with art depicting that phase of the narrative. If it
is Nicodemus, it may hint more strongly at being the deposition,
as both Joseph and Nicodemus are featured in that element
in the narrative, traditionally an art, but Nicodemus is not
normally featured in depictions of the entombment. In fifty five,
michel Angelo attempted to destroy the Florentine Piata. He was
(13:28):
successful in breaking off Christ's left leg and arm, and
he chipped other sections. 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
(13:49):
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. Another is that his servant had
been nagging him to finished 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 michel Angelo himself when pressed on the matter
(14:11):
in the account written by one of his contemporaries, georgiava Sari.
The third and fourth theories and exactly what happened are
a little bit more involved. 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
(14:31):
felt that he hadn't properly captured. So at this point
in art history, a leg placed in another's lap held
a sexual meaning. It suggested that the 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
(14:52):
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 taken down in the deposition
and and is 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
(15:16):
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 situation and more
of a let's a race and start over and fix
some pieces. The fourth theory involves the hood figure again.
It's often been discussed that the Nicodemus figure was also
intended to be a self portrait of michel Angelo. As
(15:39):
Nicodemus had connection to sculpting, this would have been a
pretty natural move on the part of the artist, 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
(15:59):
likeness as Nicodemus from the work in order to avoid
suspicion that he was actually a religious dissenter. Eventually, Michelangelo
consented to allow one of his pupils to Burrio Calcani,
to restore the piece, but not the leg, which may
give credence to the slung leg sery Calcani's work was
(16:19):
eventually completed. He did restore the other elements that have
been broken, and it is now on display at the
Museu del Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. In the
fifteen fifties, michel Angelo began yet a third pieta sculpture,
the Rondanini Pieta. He worked on his piece right up
until the week of his death in fifteen sixty four.
(16:41):
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
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
(17:03):
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 Piezza, which
is just the spectacular, beautiful, realistic looking thing. This is
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
(17:24):
he retained only one of Christ's arms from the original
part of his work. But now we're going to jump
back to Michelangelo's Roman Pieta. 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.
More specifically, it was displayed behind seven sheets of bulletproof plexiglass,
(17:46):
each of which weighed about seven hundred pounds, which is
about three eight But just to get the sculpture to
New York from the Vatican took an incredible and careful effort.
Properly packing and trans supporting this priceless piece was a
work of really careful engineering. A special committee called the
Vatican Pavilion Transport Committee was formed to address this task,
(18:11):
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
there was a danger of internal fissures in the marble
that couldn't be seen just from external examination, but that
could cause it to crack if it was bumped or
(18:32):
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 awareness
of the danger involved in an overseas voyage. Radiologists from
(18:58):
Eastman Kodak were alled 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 assumption that
there were indeed fissures, so they designed the most shockproof
ride that they possibly could. There were three nesting cases
(19:22):
initially made for the job. The exterior case was steel
and inside that were two wooden cases, and inside those
was the petal and the weight of the cases. The
statue and all of the packing materials 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
(19:45):
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. If you
have access to j Store, one of my sources on
this is of very fantastic and very technical article about
all of this, which includes tables of calculation for static
(20:06):
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 test the design,
a plaster replica of another Michelangelo statue, Moses, was used
to perform drop tests from heights ranging from a hundred
(20:26):
and seven to two hundred and sixty centimeters In similar packaging.
The combination of nesting cases and loose foam fill proved
successful in this testing. Compression testing was also performed. Eventually,
the second inner case was abandoned to enable the use
of more foam polystyrene, which added both cushion and buoyancy
(20:46):
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 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
(21:08):
very like, Okay, we're solving these problems, we're figuring it out.
Were 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 as carefully planned
as the design of the packaging itself. So for that
previously broken hand that we mentioned, each of the digits
(21:29):
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. 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
(21:53):
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 which was in
the form of these dilite 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
(22:13):
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 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
(22:34):
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.
That engineer that wrote that article was saying, we did
all this work, and thankfully our work, like our our
(22:55):
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 glad it was never really 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
(23:16):
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
deck of the ship like it wasn't inside it was
and that was all part of like the plan because
(23:36):
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, I it was
so stressful to so look at these pictures. The pH
I was not the only art that was sent to
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
(23:58):
displayed against a blue background surrounded by vertical strings of
votive lights. Millions of people visited the pavilions of view it,
and you can find photographs and home movies taking up
of the display online. Yeah, there are lots of those
available if you just do an Internet search for pieton
New York World's Fair, you'll instantly see just dozens and
(24:21):
dozens of in many cases really beautifully taken photographs of
how it was displayed. And the World's Fair appearance of
the Roman Pieta was so incredibly popular that the Vaticans
started receiving a steady stream of requests for the statue
to be loaned for other events. And overwhelmed by all
of this correspondence, and unwilling to take the risk of
(24:42):
having this prized 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 made in part to
keep the Pietas safe, trouble still Old befell the statue
in nineteen seventy two. Uh And this was originally the
(25:05):
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 nineteen two,
a thirty three year old Hungarian man named Laslow Toss
jumped over an altar railing and attacked 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
(25:27):
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. Tooth was subdued by
tourists and the security guards and he was taken away.
He yelled throughout the incident, I am Jesus Christ. Christ
has risen from the dead. He went on to claim
(25:50):
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 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
(26:12):
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. Over the course of five months, fragments
and pieces were identified and cataloged. Once that process was complete,
(26:33):
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 piece back into position. And they didn't even
actually have every missing piece, which they knew based on
(26:54):
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 I'm like, oh, this did get
sad at the end of for a couple of reasons.
One missing piece did arrive in an anonymous parcel from
the United States of visiting tourists who had witnessed the
(27:15):
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
these notes, I was just thinking about how many tiny
pieces of the Pieta are spread no telling where throughout
(27:40):
the globe, which is just an oddly shocking thought to me.
Fortunately a mold of the Pieta 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 and restoration, So remember it took five months just
to do the cataloging and the roughly another five to
(28:01):
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's Fair,
it was placed behind protective bulletproof glass and it still is.
As for Laslow taught, his story is patchy and sad.
At the time of the attack, he was a former geologist,
(28:23):
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
a century old piece of art home with them. Yeah,
that was what I presumed you. I just wanted to
(28:45):
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 it 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 yeah, talks. Story is continues to be sad. Uh.
In the years prior to this violent outburst, he had
(29:07):
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, and
in that fight he fractured his skull. He vanished for
(29:29):
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. He was,
and said, instead sent to a psychiatric institution for two
(29:50):
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 abound. But
it appears that Toth all but vanished once he got
(30:11):
back to Australia. Yeah, we just there is like no
thread of what happened to him after that. Uh, just
troubling on a variety of levels. Um, So we don't
know if he could still be alive, if he you know,
went on delete a completely different life, if he lives
a life of anonymity. We just have no idea. It
(30:36):
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
this was something that would come up in conversation often.
And I remember, like I always had questions about the perpetrator,
(30:59):
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
about his treatment. Uh but yeah, so we don't know.
What we do know is that Michelangelo's Pieta is still
(31:19):
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
number of just spectacular photographs taken of it over the years,
so it is easy to to look at and examine
(31:40):
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
sense of a sort of otherworldly experience because it is
so just indescribably beautiful and sort of moving. So it's
(32:04):
a piece I love. I think it's gorgeous. I love
to talk about a little bit of art here and there.
Thank you so much for joining us today for this classic.
If you have heard any kind of email address or
maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of
the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly
(32:24):
obsolete because we have changed our email address again. You
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(32:47):
in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio.
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your favorite shows.
Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
(00:22):
as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift,
Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
(00:43):
and today we're going to talk about what is perhaps
the most famous of all images and Christian are are
definitely one of the most famous, uh, the Piata. And
I was originally going to research just the attack on
Micolandelo's piazza in two and we are going to talk
about that. But as I got to researching that, I
ended up down this sort of wonderful rabbit hole of
(01:04):
this image in art history is depicted by many artists
over time, and specifically the ones that michel Angelo 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. 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
(01:25):
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 famous Pieta that michel
Angelo worked on. So we're getting a little bit of
(01:47):
all of that in today's episode. Just in case you
don't know the Piata and the general sense is any
depiction or representation of the Virgin Mary morning over Christ's
dead by I don't know why. I suddenly was like
that sounded so bleak, right, Well, it is bleak. It's
(02:09):
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 see them
starting these images of of Merry holding Christ after the
(02:30):
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 present in the Gospels,
Like there's not a specific moment where they describe this. Uh.
(02:53):
The Christ crucifixion is in there, the descent from the cross,
or the deposition as it's off my all 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. Yet it became
a really important image. An a lecture given by the
(03:16):
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 Pieta as a significant scene in
religious art, despite it not actually being something that's ever
mentioned in scripture. Harry's describes the development of devotional images
versus narrative images, and whereas narrative religious art clearly shows
(03:40):
a story playing out, devotional imagery takes these images out
of their narrative context. And this came about in the
hundreds in relation to an intense religious reverence. These images
were basically so that the 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
(04:01):
common devotional images to come out of Germany, specifically during
their undreds, the scene of the Piata 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. Mary's pain and lament over
Christ's death had long been a part of religious writings
(04:22):
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, Christ is often portrayed in a
smaller size compared to Mary. This hearkens back to his
(04:44):
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 suffering
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 deep sorrow. Her face is often
contorted with grief, and the first of these images in
(05:05):
this style date back to again the early hundreds. 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 in a prayer position rather than
holding the body of her son. And the third type,
(05:28):
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. It's
not just Christ and Mary, and there's often a peaceful
landscape in the background, and sometimes there is an architectural feature.
Christ wounds are frequently, though not always, less of a focus.
(05:49):
It's a little bit of a softer image, it's not
so fraught with grief. Between thirteen hundred and fift hundred,
personal iconography became a lot more common pre es lee
to that art had been more of a public concept,
so during this period, works of art representing the Pieta
became more prevalent in people's private homes instead of just
(06:11):
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 into our sponsor break now so we can
keep all of that chunk together. In the fourteen nineties,
(06:36):
michel Angelo, still very young at this point, traveled from
Florence to Venice and to Bologna and eventually ended up
in Rome. In four when Michelangelo was commissioned to create
his famous Piety, he was only twenty four. The contract
was signed on August. That document is actually now part
(06:56):
of the Vaticans collection. The work was intended for the
funeral chapel of St. Petronia in St. Peter's Basilica. The
person who requested the art was the French ambassador, Cardinal
Bilair do la Grela. The piece would be part of
the decor of the chapel where he was to be
interred and where funeral services would be given for other
(07:18):
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 fift hundred,
and he worked in the round, so he was able
(07:39):
to access all sides of the piece at once, and
the finished sculpture waste three tons. Blaire had died in
so 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. Mary appears
(08:03):
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 this sculpture. There's
(08:26):
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 early German style
(08:47):
of Phi works, it appears to be more of a
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 sit above
(09:09):
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 was placed
(09:32):
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
(09:53):
presentation would affect the need for size. This was the
only one of Michelangelo's sculptures that carved as 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
(10:14):
having done that, and he vowed to never again put
his name on his work 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
(10:36):
chapel to see it. And this is sort of one
of those wonderfully rare cases of an artist actually appreciate
being appreciated in his time rather than after it, because
michel Angelo lived another sixty 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
(10:56):
a rock star. So the Pieta that you think of
when you hear the name Gelangelo, that one that we
have just been talking about. It's his most famous, but
not his only depiction of that moment. His second Pieta,
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
(11:19):
the artist to adorn his own final resting place, and
as such 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,
(11:39):
some elements of the piece indicate that it's a representation
of the deposition, 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
(12:02):
we're at a departure from the classic marry in Christ
set up. 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
(12:22):
is not entirely clear to everyone who it's supposed to be.
I will say when I say that there are people
who believe 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
(12:43):
could be Nicodemus, the Pharisee, who appears in the Gospel
of John and assists in the burial of Jesus. The
Nicodemus interpretation is a common one. If the figure is
Joseph of Arimathea, that that figure, combined with the presence
of Mary Magna Lynn would suggest that this is an
intombant piece, as those two figures are traditionally more associated
(13:05):
with art depicting that phase of the narrative. If it
is Nicodemus, it may hint more strongly at being the deposition,
as both Joseph and Nicodemus are featured in that element
in the narrative, traditionally an art, but Nicodemus is not
normally featured in depictions of the entombment. In fifty five,
michel Angelo attempted to destroy the Florentine Piata. He was
(13:28):
successful in breaking off Christ's left leg and arm, and
he chipped other sections. 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
(13:49):
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. Another is that his servant had
been nagging him to finished 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 michel Angelo himself when pressed on the matter
(14:11):
in the account written by one of his contemporaries, georgiava Sari.
The third and fourth theories and exactly what happened are
a little bit more involved. 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
(14:31):
felt that he hadn't properly captured. So at this point
in art history, a leg placed in another's lap held
a sexual meaning. It suggested that the 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
(14:52):
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 taken down in the deposition
and and is 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
(15:16):
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 situation and more
of a let's a race and start over and fix
some pieces. The fourth theory involves the hood figure again.
It's often been discussed that the Nicodemus figure was also
intended to be a self portrait of michel Angelo. As
(15:39):
Nicodemus had connection to sculpting, this would have been a
pretty natural move on the part of the artist, 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
(15:59):
likeness as Nicodemus from the work in order to avoid
suspicion that he was actually a religious dissenter. Eventually, Michelangelo
consented to allow one of his pupils to Burrio Calcani,
to restore the piece, but not the leg, which may
give credence to the slung leg sery Calcani's work was
(16:19):
eventually completed. He did restore the other elements that have
been broken, and it is now on display at the
Museu del Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. In the
fifteen fifties, michel Angelo began yet a third pieta sculpture,
the Rondanini Pieta. He worked on his piece right up
until the week of his death in fifteen sixty four.
(16:41):
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
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
(17:03):
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 Piezza, which
is just the spectacular, beautiful, realistic looking thing. This is
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
(17:24):
he retained only one of Christ's arms from the original
part of his work. But now we're going to jump
back to Michelangelo's Roman Pieta. 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.
More specifically, it was displayed behind seven sheets of bulletproof plexiglass,
(17:46):
each of which weighed about seven hundred pounds, which is
about three eight But just to get the sculpture to
New York from the Vatican took an incredible and careful effort.
Properly packing and trans supporting this priceless piece was a
work of really careful engineering. A special committee called the
Vatican Pavilion Transport Committee was formed to address this task,
(18:11):
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
there was a danger of internal fissures in the marble
that couldn't be seen just from external examination, but that
could cause it to crack if it was bumped or
(18:32):
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 awareness
of the danger involved in an overseas voyage. Radiologists from
(18:58):
Eastman Kodak were alled 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 assumption that
there were indeed fissures, so they designed the most shockproof
ride that they possibly could. There were three nesting cases
(19:22):
initially made for the job. The exterior case was steel
and inside that were two wooden cases, and inside those
was the petal and the weight of the cases. The
statue and all of the packing materials 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
(19:45):
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. If you
have access to j Store, one of my sources on
this is of very fantastic and very technical article about
all of this, which includes tables of calculation for static
(20:06):
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 test the design,
a plaster replica of another Michelangelo statue, Moses, was used
to perform drop tests from heights ranging from a hundred
(20:26):
and seven to two hundred and sixty centimeters In similar packaging.
The combination of nesting cases and loose foam fill proved
successful in this testing. Compression testing was also performed. Eventually,
the second inner case was abandoned to enable the use
of more foam polystyrene, which added both cushion and buoyancy
(20:46):
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 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
(21:08):
very like, Okay, we're solving these problems, we're figuring it out.
Were 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 as carefully planned
as the design of the packaging itself. So for that
previously broken hand that we mentioned, each of the digits
(21:29):
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. 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
(21:53):
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 which was in
the form of these dilite 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
(22:13):
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 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
(22:34):
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.
That engineer that wrote that article was saying, we did
all this work, and thankfully our work, like our our
(22:55):
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 glad it was never really 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
(23:16):
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
deck of the ship like it wasn't inside it was
and that was all part of like the plan because
(23:36):
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, I it was
so stressful to so look at these pictures. The pH
I was not the only art that was sent to
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
(23:58):
displayed against a blue background surrounded by vertical strings of
votive lights. Millions of people visited the pavilions of view it,
and you can find photographs and home movies taking up
of the display online. Yeah, there are lots of those
available if you just do an Internet search for pieton
New York World's Fair, you'll instantly see just dozens and
(24:21):
dozens of in many cases really beautifully taken photographs of
how it was displayed. And the World's Fair appearance of
the Roman Pieta was so incredibly popular that the Vaticans
started receiving a steady stream of requests for the statue
to be loaned for other events. And overwhelmed by all
of this correspondence, and unwilling to take the risk of
(24:42):
having this prized 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 made in part to
keep the Pietas safe, trouble still Old befell the statue
in nineteen seventy two. Uh And this was originally the
(25:05):
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 nineteen two,
a thirty three year old Hungarian man named Laslow Toss
jumped over an altar railing and attacked 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
(25:27):
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. Tooth was subdued by
tourists and the security guards and he was taken away.
He yelled throughout the incident, I am Jesus Christ. Christ
has risen from the dead. He went on to claim
(25:50):
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 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
(26:12):
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. Over the course of five months, fragments
and pieces were identified and cataloged. Once that process was complete,
(26:33):
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 piece back into position. And they didn't even
actually have every missing piece, which they knew based on
(26:54):
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 I'm like, oh, this did get
sad at the end of for a couple of reasons.
One missing piece did arrive in an anonymous parcel from
the United States of visiting tourists who had witnessed the
(27:15):
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
these notes, I was just thinking about how many tiny
pieces of the Pieta are spread no telling where throughout
(27:40):
the globe, which is just an oddly shocking thought to me.
Fortunately a mold of the Pieta 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 and restoration, So remember it took five months just
to do the cataloging and the roughly another five to
(28:01):
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's Fair,
it was placed behind protective bulletproof glass and it still is.
As for Laslow taught, his story is patchy and sad.
At the time of the attack, he was a former geologist,
(28:23):
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
a century old piece of art home with them. Yeah,
that was what I presumed you. I just wanted to
(28:45):
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 it 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 yeah, talks. Story is continues to be sad. Uh.
In the years prior to this violent outburst, he had
(29:07):
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, and
in that fight he fractured his skull. He vanished for
(29:29):
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. He was,
and said, instead sent to a psychiatric institution for two
(29:50):
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 abound. But
it appears that Toth all but vanished once he got
(30:11):
back to Australia. Yeah, we just there is like no
thread of what happened to him after that. Uh, just
troubling on a variety of levels. Um, So we don't
know if he could still be alive, if he you know,
went on delete a completely different life, if he lives
a life of anonymity. We just have no idea. It
(30:36):
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
this was something that would come up in conversation often.
And I remember, like I always had questions about the perpetrator,
(30:59):
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
about his treatment. Uh but yeah, so we don't know.
What we do know is that Michelangelo's Pieta is still
(31:19):
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
number of just spectacular photographs taken of it over the years,
so it is easy to to look at and examine
(31:40):
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
sense of a sort of otherworldly experience because it is
so just indescribably beautiful and sort of moving. So it's
(32:04):
a piece I love. I think it's gorgeous. I love
to talk about a little bit of art here and there.
Thank you so much for joining us today for this classic.
If you have heard any kind of email address or
maybe a Facebook you are l during the course of
the episode, that might be obsolete. It might be doubly
(32:24):
obsolete because we have changed our email address again. You
can now reach us at History podcast at i heart
radio dot com, and we're all over social media at
missed in History and you can subscribe to our show
on Apple podcasts, Google podcast the I heart Radio app,
and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed
(32:47):
in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio.
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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