Written by Clara Kernodle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGod Abroad\u201d is a travel column by sophomore Clara Kernodle. Each week, she writes about the different ways she sees God during her HUE study abroad trip. This week, she visited La Piet\u00e0 in Italy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We leave Italy today, but I\u2019m tempted to walk the hour across Rome to see La Piet\u00e0 once more. After yesterday\u2019s hectic visit to the Vatican Museum and a few minutes staring up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I walked with some friends down the street to St. Peter\u2019s Basilica. We arrived at the perfect hour, for the sun was set in golden layers across the pillared fa\u00e7ade, and we walked inside during a musical celebration of mass. Inside, we looked up forever, drinking in 10 stories\u2019 worth of nave and dome, and then to the left \u2014 there it was, the famous Piet\u00e0. Mary, downcast, holding the small and completely unexalted body of Christ, the marble bathed in gentle light behind protective glass. A handful of people gathered to look at the curves of the fabric, the lines of Jesus\u2019s ribs, the sorrow in Mary\u2019s eyes, and to read the following inscription: \u201cMarble sculpture representing the Piet\u00e0 dates 1499. The work was assigned to Michelangelo Buonarroti, who was then 23 years old \u2026 One should observe the silent dialogue between the two faces: it betrays suffering, hope, a longing \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Florentine Piet\u00e0, Michelangelo\u2019s last, is given a quieter exaltation. The unfinished, unpolished and unprotected sculpture, dated around 1555, stands in a small, plain room in the Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence and is cast in a light that outlines the grief in the four figures presented. Michelangelo intended the Florentine Piet\u00e0 for his own tomb and sculpted the figures of Mary, Christ, Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus to highlight the grief of an old man. The hooded Nicodemus, not Mary, is the focal point of this sculpture and was chosen by Michelangelo as a self-portrait. When you enter the dark gray room in the Duomo Museum, you can\u2019t help but gasp \u2014 the yellow light on a rough-hewn, humbly beautiful sculpture will do that to you. And you are disappointed, since the Florentine Piet\u00e0 is not nearly as masterful as the one in St. Peter\u2019s, even though Michelangelo was older and more practiced when he did the former. You have to stand somberly in the gray room, looking at the lines in the twisted shoulder and the chisel scars on Mary\u2019s face, and read the words of Michelangelo\u2019s prayer-poem printed on the opposite wall, before you begin to see the passion and beauty of this sadder, less perfect sculpture. Its solitary placement reflects how its sculptor abandoned it, even tried to damage it after eight years of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both piet\u00e0s \u2014 Michelangelo\u2019s first and last piet\u00e0 sculptures \u2014 tell a similar story, one which connects the biblical story of mother and son to Michelangelo\u2019s own. In both, the composition of the figures and the expressions on the faces of Mary and her son represent the sculptor\u2019s relationship with his mother, whose love he did not experience and, despite his efforts, could not return. Ricardo, our guide through the Duomo Museum, told us that a piet\u00e0, whether in painting or sculpture, represents Christ\u2019s sacrifice and the corresponding pain of his mother. He also pointed out a significant insight into the genius of Michelangelo, saying that the suffering of Christ\u2019s and Mary\u2019s faces may show Michelangelo\u2019s and his mother\u2019s desire to have (and inability to attain) a loving, thriving connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two Piet\u00e0s grieve in their own ways. In seeing both, I saw Isaiah 53:5, which is written on the plaques of each Piet\u00e0: \u201cHe was wounded for our transgressions \u2026 by his stripes we are healed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Clara Kernodle \u201cGod Abroad\u201d is a travel column by sophomore Clara Kernodle. 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