Blog 1. An Encounter with Beautiful Art
While on a trip, in pre-COVID times, I encountered Michelangelo’s sculptural work Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica. Although I had previously studied the art in various curriculums, the experience of examining the sculptural work in-person had me entranced. As a depiction of Jesus and his mother Mary moments after he had been removed from the cross, Michelangelo’s work evokes aspects of emotion and themes not typically associated with the festivity of Easter.
As described by Gadamer, art is characterized as beautiful by its incorporation of play, symbol, and festivity. Pieta plays with the viewer through its use of naturalistic appearance and sculptural material. The three dimensionality of the art feels realistic, familiar, and portrays the son of our most divine being at human scale. This intention of Michelangelo, to make the image within the viewers scale of understanding, is at the heart of the piece’s hermeneutic identity. Gadamer states that, “to understand something, I must be able to identify it,” and by playing with marble Michelangelo has given us an identifiable image that we can play along with to experience its greater meanings (Gadamer 25).
In terms of symbol, the image of Mary holding her child symbolizes and triggers emotions that we understand, specifically the concept of family. Because we can understand what it means to have family, we can take the task of implementing our personal life experiences to emotionally connect with the depicted image. While the exact logistics of the moment may not be relatable, we can all connect to the relationship between parent and child from one at least one side. This relationship would be the unveiled element of the symbol, as it is clearly depicted and hard to miss upon examination.
I would then argue that the veiled element of symbol ties directly into the festival of Easter that the art is celebrating. While we typically focus on the aspect of resurrection and the joy that it will bring us in our own lives, this art instead tones down the mood and establishes that in order for this joy to occur, death must come first. It targets the loss and anguish felt by a mother whose son died in order to forgive our sins. In thoughts of resurrection, I tend to skip over the fearful elements of death and instead focus on the enjoyment that we are told to look towards. However, Michelangelo brings this common fear to the forefront. By asking us to acknowledge that this fearful thing must happen, we remember and thank Jesus for dying for us, rather than just acknowledging our hope for our own resurrection.
Adding to Gadamer’s view of art’s festivity, Pieper claims that festivals must be contemplative and that “the fine arts keep alive the memory of the true, ritualistic, religious origins of festivals when these begin to wither or be forgotten” (Pieper 53). His view of art finding a home within festival directly connects to Michelangelo’s recreation of Jesus’s crucifixion. This art is ‘keeping alive’ the true origin of Easter. It is a time when we as Christians gaze upon the resurrection as a gift and it becomes the transcendent end that us humans search for in the celebration. Therefore, Michelangelo’s art helps the celebrants focus on the deeper, contemplative aspects of the Easter holiday through Pieta’s characteristics of play, symbol, and festivity.
