classical conversations essays - challenge 2

☆ ∼ Pietà

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." — Pericles

It's 1499. The renaissance is reaching its later years. Philosophy, art, literature, and science is continually advancing. Corruption is rampant in the church. And the Pietà is being finished up by a young Michelangelo, inscribing his signature into the sash of Mary, the sculpture ready to be displayed in Rome.

The continued rise of humanism is prevalent all-throughout art, and the position of artists in society is still transforming. All throughout art we see the philosophy of the time made clear, but in no major piece can it be clearer than in the Pietà. The Pietà continues to be a shining example of the major principles of though at the time.

In the Pietà, we get a depiction of Mary cradling a dead Jesus, mourning the loss of her son, straight from the cross. It's a graceful and elegant depiction of them both, despite much about the scene needing to be altered to convey as such. To start, we can see that Mary is quite large compared to Jesus, the size necessary to depict Jesus in a dignified manner. We can also see that Mary, a woman who would've been 33 years old at the time of this event and in great distress, depicted youthful and and abnormally collected. We can also see that both Jesus and Mary are portrayed as adhering to the beauty standard of the time. Much about the scene was changed to create an artistic depiction of it.

During the time he completed the Pietà, Michelangelo was 24 years old. When younger, he was sent to learn grammar under the humanist, Francesco da Urbino, but was uninterested in the work assigned to him, and took to copying church paintings, and taking up the company of artists. He later became an apprentice to Ghirlandaio, a painter who came from Florence to work on the Sistine Chapel, and when Ghirlandaio was asked for his two best painters, he sent Michelangelo, along with another. Michelangelo also ended up attending the Platonic Academy, where he began to sculpt, and he was influenced by philosophers of the day.

Once he left the academy, Michelangelo soon began sculpting for commissioners, which led to Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas commissioning Michelangelo to create the Pietà. It is most likely that Jean was a corrupt official in the church, as most were, who was syphoning money from the church to line his own pockets. This is probably how he afforded to commission from Michelangelo. He died quite soon after the sculpture began, so instead of the work being displayed so he could show off his wealth, it was displayed at his funeral, although it was later moved to a church, where it sits on-top a pedestal.

But it was simply the environment at the time that produced Jean de Bilhèhers-Lagraulas, so let's talk culture. During the time that the Pietà was created, there was the prominence of two very influential philosophies, humanism, and neo-platonism. Let's dissect humanism first.

Humanism was not known as such until later, where it was categorically linked to the Renaissance. But you can see the ideals pop up in text from the time, especially when we turn to the man considered to be the father of humanism, Petrarch. He was interested in knowledge and discovery from the very early parts of his life, and studied alongside his father. He also began to write poetry when younger, carrying this habit to later parts of his life. His interest in past writings led him to discover influential manuscripts, that helped to widen the knowledge of the public during the time of the Renaissance.

While continuing his love for writing poetry, he wrote poems like Canzoniere, which touched on humanist ideals. This all culminated in arguably his most influential works, where he outlined the major categories that would later influence and become the basis of humanistic studies, like those of the Platonic Academy. These principles were rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry, and grammar. And even after he died, his work continued to influence others, and they helped to perpetuate the ideals he had set up before his death.

The other major philosophy that influenced Michelangelo during the time he made the Pietà was neo-platonism. This philosophy emerged during the 3rd century, lasted to the 6th century, and later had a revival during the later 15th and earlier 16th centuries. It was influential in maintaining Christianity in the intellectual sphere during this time, due to some of its fundamental principles. One of the main ideas which influenced artists at the time of the Renaissance, is the belief in different hierarchical levels to concepts and object. For example, let's take the concept of a chair.

Within neo-platonistic thought, there is the first level of a chair, which is simply how we interact with chairs in our day to day. When on this level, a chair, in the mind of the thinker, is simply the object you sit in. It is so plain that it is a semi-unthinking state. Then we have the second level, the more philosophical version of a chair. We now consider what constitutes a chair, why we create chairs the way that we do, what the similarities and differences are in the group we consider "chair". If the first level was the unconscious interaction we have with chairs, this is the conscious interaction with chairs. The final level in neo-platonism, is The Chair. This is when we have collected been so intellectually, physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually intertwined with the chair concept that we now have a divine relationship with the concept, on the level of God.

Now, if we step back, and replaced the concept of chair, with the concept of art, we can start to see how the artists of the Renaissance interacted with the works they created. With a fuller understanding of how the artist may have thought, we can analyse this work of art through such a lens.

If we have a look at the Pietà once more, we can see clearly that this was one of many attempts from Michelangelo to have a deeper and richer understanding and knowledge of art, with a direct way to propagate a fuller biblical understanding of the cruxifixction. We can see it in the deep understanding of the anatomy of Christ's creation, and the human body Christ sculpted for himself and his mother now being sculpted by Michelangelo. We can see it in the knowledge of what to add, what to alter, and what to depict within the scene. We see him add the rock Mary sits on, and the tree stub that props up Jesus' leg. We see him alter Mary's size, and we see him depict the partial necrosis of Jesus' body taking place. We see a man intimately connected with God's creation, and we see vividly the attempt to have an even deeper relationship with God.

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1158 words in total!