Introduction

On 6 August 1499, clergy from various churches in Rome, including St. Peter’s, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and Santa Maria del Popolo, gathered to conduct the vigil for the dead for one of their own. Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas (1434/39–99)—Benedictine, cardinal of Santa Sabina, archbishop of St. Denis, and diplomat for French interests in Rome—had died.Footnote ¹ His vigil began immediately at his home and lasted through the night. The assembled clerics distributed candles and shared the singing of vespers, matins, and lauds. In the morning, the priests who had kept the overnight vigil processed with the body so that it could lie in state in St. Peter’s Basilica on a catafalque adorned with twenty-four torches.Footnote ² No fewer than eleven of his fellow cardinals honored Lagraulas’s prestigious religious and political career by congregating in the church of Santa Petronilla—a site long associated with French kings—adjacent to St. Peter’s for Mass the next day.Footnote ³ The commemorations continued following his burial in Santa Petronilla, including a High Mass on August 31 and a memorial service on September 9. Finally, on October 3 at San Luigi dei Francesci, the French national church in Rome, there was a funerary service organized by the clergy.Footnote ⁴ In accordance with Lagraulas’s will, the church of San Luigi dei Francesci also established and oversaw a chaplaincy to pray for the salvation of his soul.Footnote ⁵ Sometime after his interment in Santa Petronilla and following his wishes, the cardinal’s tomb was marked by a simple stone relief slab showing Lagraulas laid out on his funeral bier (fig. 1). In addition to this plain grave marker, the cardinal commissioned a young, relatively unknown Florentine sculptor named Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) to create a life-size image of Mary holding her dead son on her lap—more commonly known as a Pietà (fig. 2). Between 1499 and 1501, this sculpture was placed in Santa Petronilla alongside the cardinal’s burial marker.

Figure 1. Tomb slab of Cardinal Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas, 1499–1500. Vatican, Grotte, St. Peter’s. Photo: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

Figure 2. Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pietà, 1498–1500. Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

As has been often recognized, Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s is a unique conception of the Pietà theme. The characteristics that make the work most striking—Mary’s youth and calm, Christ’s Adonis-like body, both figures’ proportions, the stunning skill of the carving, and the large scale of the work—are also those that make it difficult to interpret. Adding to the trouble is that it seems to have little in common with either German counterparts, such as the Röttgen Pietà, or French precedents of the theme. Although some of this license can be attributed to Michelangelo’s own artistic vision and his considerable talent, the sculptor was not alone in making these visual and iconographic choices. His patron, a French cardinal, must have had a hand in the work’s development and execution. Moreover, the physical changes Michelangelo makes to the iconographic tradition of the Pietà also bring important shifts to the theological message that respond to the work’s setting and function.

Cardinal Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas envisioned the Rome Pietà from the beginning as an integral part of his immediate and ongoing funerary commemorations. In addition to engaging with the theology of Durandus (ca. 1230–96), Saint Antoninus (1389–1459), Saint Bernard (1090–1153), and Savonarola (1452–98), among others, the Rome Pietà mirrors and amplifies the vigils and masses for the dead, particularly the service of vespers. Historically associated with Pietà images, the hour of vespers initiates the Office of the Dead. Mary is at the center of this religious story and at the center of Michelangelo’s composition. She functions as an exemplar to the faithful in grieving, as the consummate intercessor to the sinful, as the path for their salvation through her Assumption, and as their hope for redemption in her role as the queen of heaven. She is the faithful Christian’s advocate and guide, especially in matters of death and dying.

Despite an agreement and several letters attesting to his involvement, scholars have largely divorced Cardinal Lagraulas from his tomb monument and best-known commissioned work, the St. Peter’s Pietà.Footnote ⁶ Most recently, the vast majority of scholarship has been obsessed with the work’s signature—an indelible sign of Michelangelo’s artistic and humanist identity—to the exclusion of nearly every other element in the work (fig. 3).Footnote ⁷ More egregious, however, is that interpretations of the sculpture, particularly in light of its signature, have become increasingly secularized. For example, some scholars even claim that the Pietà “does not quite succeed” as a religious work, arguing that Michelangelo was more interested in proving his worth to the Roman art scene and besting the ancients than in making a coherent theological statement or properly commemorating the cardinal and his death.Footnote ⁸ Mary’s incongruous youth, her restrained emotional reaction, and Christ’s peaceful, sleep-like death are seen, more often than not, as Michelangelo’s solitary and idiosyncratic choices. Only in this scholarly atmosphere could a quasi-sexual relationship between Mary and Christ not only be seriously considered, but reiterated.Footnote ⁹

Figure 3. Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pietà, 1498–1500, detail of the signature. Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Although Michelangelo may have understood the magnitude of the career opportunity that stood before him in the commission for the Pietà, his iconographic choices can only be interpreted when considered in the sculpture’s original context. In this case, context means reconstructing a physical ensemble for the sculpture; recognizing the central role of the commissioner, Cardinal Lagraulas; and, most importantly, considering the religious milieu in which the Pietà functioned. This article will be the first to consider how this particular tomb monument functioned in the larger ensemble of mourning and remembrance during the liturgical rites associated with the cardinal’s death that followed for years on the anniversary of his passing.

The Cardinal’s Plan

Cardinal Lagraulas’s tomb monument, if it was ever completed as he envisioned, did not remain intact for long. Although the Pietà was installed by 1501, Santa Petronilla’s demolition began in 1514 and the sculpture was moved sometime before 1519. This means that the statue was in situ for fewer than twenty years and neither Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) nor Ascanio Condivi (1525–74) saw it in its original location.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, no contemporary accounts exist describing what it was like to see the work in the space and in the ensemble for which it was intended. It was first moved to the secretarium of Old St. Peter’s until 1568, when it became part of the chapel dedicated to Sixtus IV.Footnote ¹¹ Today, it is obscured high above an altar in a sterile chapel behind bulletproof glass, which, in addition to protecting the work from madmen wielding hammers, reflects the constant flashing of tourist cameras and markedly obscures the sculpture group.Footnote ¹² The sculpture’s current exhibition is problematic for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that it conforms to neither the typical construction of fifteenth-century cardinals’ tombs, nor what is recoverable of Lagraulas’s intentions for the sculpture.

Carol Richardson notes that one of the most fundamentally important aspects of any cardinal’s life was the provisioning of his will, which necessarily included articulating his wishes for his funeral and funerary monuments.Footnote ¹³ The reason for the will’s great importance was the simple fact that cardinals, unlike popes or courtiers, did not have a clear path of succession for their worldly possessions after their deaths and frequently had large estates that needed tending.Footnote ¹⁴ Cost was also a concern, and with the number of funerary services required for a cardinal, price could quickly outstrip resources.Footnote ¹⁵ Typically, the will of any cardinal would give specific guidance on the following issues: the cost of his funerals, particularly the cost of wax for candles to adorn the catafalque, as well as how the services should be conducted; the creation of a funerary monument; money to pay clergy to offer services on his behalf on the anniversary of his death; and the division of any remaining wealth among charitable causes or churches that he supported. Indeed, much if not most of the will was consumed with the cost and implementation of the cardinal’s specific plan for his death and burial, including any funerary monuments he wished to have established in his honor.Footnote ¹⁶

Although previous generations of popes and cardinals may have been buried in other churches—St. John Lateran, for example—St. Peter’s in the time of Cardinal Lagraulas “presented a unique and sought-after opportunity for commemoration after death,” mostly because of its relationship to the relics of Saint Peter.Footnote ¹⁷ The majority of cardinals’ tombs in the fifteenth century were concentrated in the north aisle of the basilica, which was commonly associated with the Easter liturgy—particularly vespers. Being close to the Easter Host and associated with the miracle of resurrection was understood to be personally auspicious for those buried in nearby tombs.Footnote ¹⁸ Julius II and subsequent popes destroyed the design and arrangement of these tombs when they pulled down the old basilica, but what remains suggests that tombs were either recessed into wall niches or quasi-free-standing monuments with canopies. Both tomb formats invariably featured the effigy of the entombed laid out on a funeral bier and elevated off the ground.Footnote ¹⁹

Lagraulas used a conventional enough floor slab to mark his burial place—one that shows him laid out for his funeral. Such a burial marker was one of the most common and most humble kinds of commemorative sculpture available to fifteenth-century cardinals.Footnote ²⁰ If he had stopped simply with the slab, he would have been of little interest to art history. He also, however, took the extraordinary step of commissioning not only an altar, but also a freestanding and over-life-size sculpture to accompany it.Footnote ²¹ Further, in two separate letters he refers to the sculpture as going into “a certain chapel, which we intend to found,” and “our chapel.”Footnote ²² The language of these letters clearly indicates that he intended for his tomb marker to be seen in conjunction with an altar and the Pietà. Furthermore, all three elements are associated in later documents from San Luigi dei Francesci, whose clergy oversaw the chaplaincy established by the cardinal to pray for his soul in perpetuity.Footnote ²³ Infuriatingly, neither the documents from San Luigi dei Francesci nor the letters of the cardinal provide any idea of how the various elements—Michelangelo’s Pietà, the altar, and the tomb marker—would have related to one another.Footnote ²⁴ Nevertheless, it is possible to infer certain aspects about the ensemble.

From the evidence, it is clear that Lagraulas decided not to follow the example of his fellow cardinals when it came time to create his own tomb monument. Not only did he choose Santa Petronilla for his burial, rather than the north aisle, but he also eschewed the typical wall tomb format for his monument. Lagraulas’s burial location in Santa Petronilla—a church both physically connected to St. Peter’s at the basilica’s transept and traditionally associated with the French monarchy—certainly carried an important political message, as has been explored by Katherine Weil-Garris Brandt.Footnote ²⁵ The unorthodox form of his monument, however, currently has no scholarly explanation. There are no other comparable cardinal tombs in Rome currently known. The cardinal’s deviation from contemporary models is particularly striking when one considers that most cardinal tombs at this time were loosely based on courtly French precedents.Footnote ²⁶ At its most basic, Lagraulas’s tomb would have marked him as different, memorable, and ambitious. The cardinal’s contemporaries, moreover, might plausibly have seen the freestanding Rome Pietà as classicizing—an impression underscored by the fact that Lagraulas wanted the work to be more beautiful than any other sculpture, ancient or modern, yet existing in the Eternal City.Footnote ²⁷

Although modern viewers are conditioned to see the Pietà displayed above an altar—both because of the sculpture group’s current installation and because of the installation of copies, such as the bronze in Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome—there are several arguments against such a placement, despite the importance of the altar to the cardinal’s plans. First, scholars question whether altar tables in the fifteenth century would have been large enough to even accommodate the work.Footnote ²⁸ Moreover, no documentary evidence indicates that an altar existed in time for the cardinal’s funeral. Nor do any documents from San Luigi dei Francesci mention moving the sculpture to accommodate the altar that was established in 1504, although the tomb monument, altar, and sculpture are clearly part of the same ensemble in the minds of the clergy.Footnote ²⁹ Further, the Pietà does not seem to have been moved from one altar to another, as neither Vasari nor Condivi indicate that it was above an altar in Santa Maria delle Febbre, its first location after the destruction of Santa Petronilla.Footnote ³⁰ Finally, any altar that the cardinal might have planned was certainly not established when the sculpture and tomb marker were placed, although the altar may have ended up in one of the semicircular chapel spaces in Santa Petronilla. In this case, it might be reasonable to assume that the sculpture, the tomb marker, or both might have been moved into that chapel space, but there is no documentary evidence for such a costly and troublesome action. In short, there is little to suggest that the intended placement of Michelangelo’s sculpture was above or on an altar table. To reconstruct the cardinal’s chapel, viewers must, as William Wallace suggests, lower their gaze.Footnote ³¹

The papal master of ceremonies, Johannes Burckhard (1450–1506), states that the cardinal was buried to the right of the main altar in Santa Petronilla (located directly across from the entrance to the transept of Old St. Peter’s), and it seems reasonable that, in absence of an altar (at least before 1504), the sculpture and the grave marker were grouped on the ground to the right of the altar and in front of the wall pier.Footnote ³² The Pietà was most likely set into a niche.Footnote ³³ While entirely unorthodox in terms of surviving cardinals’ tombs in the fifteenth century, this reconstruction follows what little documentary evidence survives, as well as allows the sculpture to be viewed optimally.

Although this reconstruction is in accordance with Wallace’s ideas, it does not conform to Brandt’s proposal. Both scholars agree that the sculpture would have been much closer to the floor and much more immediately accessible than it is today.Footnote ³⁴ This placement affects both viewer interaction with the figure group and religious interpretations of the subject. Viewers must, then, imagine meeting the sculpture group in a much more intimate way and as part of an ensemble of several other objects, including the altar that the cardinal seemed desirous to found, and his grave marker. Brandt, however, is unsure about where the sculpture would have been placed in the chapel. She first proposes, following Burckhard, that the sculpture would have been close to the cardinal’s burial location—that is, on the viewer’s right as they entered the chapel.Footnote ³⁵ Not one page later in her article, however, she questions this location, deciding that the sculpture was probably placed on the viewer’s left, and to the right and favored side of the main altar. Her reasoning for this is that the work’s ideal viewing point is just to the left of center and that the figures would have addressed viewers as they entered the chapel from this angle.Footnote ³⁶ Troublingly, Brandt thinks that the possibility of either solution indicates that Michelangelo did not account for the location of the sculpture when carving it.Footnote ³⁷ Both Burckhard and Wallace, however, place the work on the right side of the chapel. With the sculpture in this location, it becomes clear that Michelangelo carefully considered a viewer’s unfolding interaction with the work in the space and composed it in an accordingly dramatic and moving fashion.

A viewer would have approached from the sculpture’s left upon entering the church of Santa Petronilla from the transept of St. Peter’s (fig. 4; the church is labeled “d” and the entrance is labeled “156.”). Illuminated by high windows and candles, the sculpture would have sat either on the floor of the chapel itself or on a slightly elevated platform and in a niche or against one of the wall piers on the viewer’s right and to the left of the main altar (fig. 4; the altar is labeled “160”).Footnote ³⁸ From this angle, Mary’s outstretched left arm and upturned hand would have beckoned for the worshipper to draw nearer (fig. 5). From this angle as well, the trim and muscular body of Christ would have been presented in a potent way for the viewers to contemplate as they moved from his relaxed feet and crossed legs to his handsome head, thrown back in a peaceful slumber. No less impressive is the contrast of textures in the sculpture from this angle. The brilliant white marble has been transformed into the smoothness of flesh, the ponderous billows of the Virgin’s copious drapery, and the stony outcropping on which Mary sits—all of which are closely juxtaposed when seen from the sculpture’s left. Moreover, much of the most daring carving of the figure can be best appreciated from this angle, including Mary’s unsupported arm with its carefully separated fingers, Christ’s deeply undercut leg and foot, and the supple folds of the Virgin’s mantle that frame her downturned face.Footnote ³⁹

Figure 4. After Tiberio Alfarano. Detail of Almae Urbis Divi Petri Veteris Novique Templi Descriptio showing Santa Petronilla, 1590. London, British Museum.

Figure 5. Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pietà, 1498–1500, statue as seen from the left. Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Between the invitation from Mary’s outstretched arm, the overwhelming beauty of the dead Christ, and the virtuoso performance of marble carving, a pilgrim or worshipper would have been practically compelled to continue walking around the sculpture. Likewise, the round shape of the church would have encouraged visitors to contemplate the sculpture from myriad angles as they moved through the space. Michelangelo designed the sculpture for this kind of active viewing demanded by Santa Petronilla. Mary’s body subtly twists to the right, encouraging viewers to keep moving from her outstretched hand across the front of the sculpture, and finally to the closed end of the figure group: the drapery hanging from Mary’s right arm. Like the closing of a curtain on a stage, this side of the sculpture group tells viewers the experience is over. The emotions engendered by this kind of active viewing are multifaceted. Mary’s expression, for example, ranges from implacable and stoic, to downtrodden and resigned, to meditative and thankful, depending upon one’s angle of viewing.Footnote ⁴⁰ The work should not merely be viewed from the front, but should instead be intimately experienced from many angles. Moving from the sculpture’s left to right, the viewer’s experience follows the arc of a dramatic production. Visitors to the chapel are first enticed by the overwhelming beauty of an initial encounter with the sculpture. First impressions, however, give way to the dramatic emotional climax of the work: an impossibly young Mary mourning the loss of her son and savior, dead on her lap.Footnote ⁴¹

From the angle just to the left of center, viewers can best appreciate Michelangelo’s considerable artistic ingenuity, as he transforms the awkward conceit of a Pietà composition—a woman holding a dead adult man on her lap—into something graceful by subtly augmenting the mass and height of the Virgin.Footnote ⁴² Through voluminous drapery and the manipulation of the Virgin’s proportions, Michelangelo makes it seem as though the Virgin could have held her son on her lap without ancillary figures and, further, that this moment could have been tender and graceful, rather than awkward and grief stricken.Footnote ⁴³ Michelangelo was bound by his agreement with the cardinal to a limit of two figures and he used considerable artistic intelligence to accommodate this restriction.Footnote ⁴⁴ The manipulation of Mary’s size also subtly increases her theological importance in the work. Although the relative difference of Mary’s size is only apparent on considerable study, the sheer mass that she adds to the composition forces the viewer to think of the work in terms of Mary’s reaction to Christ’s sacrifice and not to simply focus on the five wounds on the body of the savior.Footnote ⁴⁵ The wounds, in any case, are not overly prominent, though they are certainly present and accurately rendered.

Michelangelo’s modifications extend to the rendering of Jesus as well. Christ is undersized in comparison to Mary’s increased height and mass.Footnote ⁴⁶ Moreover, his body is not completely stiff, nor is it limp and wilting over Mary’s lap. The lack of rigor mortis in his frame ensures that it has just enough give, particularly in the bend of the knees and the hips, to settle into a comfortable and believable position across the Virgin’s lap. His hips occupy the space left for them by the chasm between Mary’s knees; his knees, in turn, fold admirably over Mary’s thighs. His feet, not held by other figures, rest comfortably, one on the ground and one on a nearby stump. Mary supports his torso with her right arm, which presents enough tension and stability to be held by the Virgin. The body also demonstrates a supple softness, which allows Christ’s head to fall back naturalistically, his shoulder to hunch slightly above Mary’s hand, and his hand to catch languidly in the folds of the Virgin’s drapery.

While standing in front of the work, the viewer could also have seen the burial marker of Cardinal Lagraulas, an important, but consistently overlooked, part of the physical ensemble of the Pietà. Michelangelo’s sculpture group, when seen in conjunction with the burial marker, would have seemed at once intensely physically present and as insubstantial as a heavenly vision. The weight and heft of the marble and its connection to the broader context of the chapel—particularly the cardinal’s funeral marker—encouraged viewers to meditate on the sculpture’s physical presence. The incongruously youthful appearance of the Virgin, the ease with which she holds her impossibly beautiful son, and the careful attention to the carving and finishing of the sculpture group, however, seemingly transport the marble to the celestial realm. Inspired by the contemplation of the sculpture and its obvious funerary context, the sixteenth-century visitor may even have offered up a prayer for the souls of the dead. In so doing, the viewer would have been echoing the prayers of those charged with commemorating the cardinal liturgically.

The clergy at San Luigi dei Francesci note their involvement in the ongoing commemoration of Lagraulas.Footnote ⁴⁷ They arranged for and paid the chaplaincy to conduct masses for the “expiation of the soul” of the cardinal “everyday.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Clearly a part of Lagraulas’s last requests, these funerary rites and commemorations continued for years after his death and were originally intended to happen in close physical proximity to the sculpture and the cardinal’s funeral marker.Footnote ⁴⁹ The precise physical context for the sculpture may be totally destroyed and beyond any reconstruction, but the liturgical and religious context—particularly the Mass for the dead—is not. Moreover, the Pietà as an iconographic category is intrinsically linked with such funerary and memorial rites. What Michelangelo and Lagraulas offer is a way of looking at Christ’s death and lamentation in the context of Christian burial. The Rome Pietà is connected to funerary liturgical function in unique ways suited to the sculpture’s setting, commissioner, and use. Understanding these elements is absolutely crucial to understanding the original intentions of both the artist and the commissioner of the Rome Pietà.

Liturgy

As a French nobleman and a cardinal, Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas would have been advantageously positioned to understand the role that sculptural Pietàs played in religious life in France and why such a monument would have been particularly appropriate for his tomb. Pietà statues were popular throughout France in the fifteenth century, appearing in churches, private homes, as illustrations in breviaries, and particularly on secondary altars in burial chapels. Pietàs, however, are not French in origin; the motif originated sometime close to the beginning of the fourteenth century in Germany. The oldest such sculpture recorded was in Cologne in 1298 (now lost).Footnote ⁵⁰ Moreover, Lagraulas was a Benedictine and would have been better prepared than most to understand the central role of the Virgin not only in the Pietà sculptures, but also in the liturgy with which those sculptures were most closely associated.Footnote ⁵¹

The Pietà as a spiritual and artistic theme has long had a connection to the hours of vespers, particularly those of Good Friday, when Christ’s descent from the cross and entombment are commemorated. Sculptures of the Madonna holding her dead son on her lap are even known as vesperbilder in Germany.Footnote ⁵² Bearing in mind the long tradition of associating vespers and the Pietà image, it makes sense to consider Michelangelo’s sculpture in terms of the liturgy that similar images were made to accompany, mirror, and amplify.

The vespers is the evening service, corresponding roughly to sunset.Footnote ⁵³ As candlelight was brought into the church to combat the growing darkness, the faithful, particularly communities of monks and nuns, would gather to commemorate the closing of the day. On Good Friday, both members of religious communities and the lay faithful alike would (and still do) gather for vespers in front of Pietà images in order to remember the sacrifice of the “Light of the World.”Footnote ⁵⁴ The popularity of vesperbilder also grew in conjunction with the devotion to the sorrows of the Virgin in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, evidenced in German mystic poetry.Footnote ⁵⁵ As might be expected by images in these contexts, early vesperbilder focused on the physical suffering of Christ and the abject, inconsolable grief of Mary. The most famous of these German examples is the Röttgen Pietà (fig. 6). Here, the wounds of Christ are gaping, exaggerated, and thick with coagulating blood. Mary holds her dead son and twists her face into a cry of pain. Together, these figures present the simultaneous extreme emotion on the part of Mary and severe physical suffering on the part of Christ.

Figure 6. Röttgen Pietà, ca. 1300–25. Bonn, Rheinisches Landesmuseum. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

Vespers, however, was not merely reserved for the veneration of the Virgin’s emotional suffering, nor simply for the marking of the hours, either on ferial days or otherwise. Vespers also marked the beginning of the Office of the Dead in the fifteenth century (a place it continues to hold).Footnote ⁵⁶ The vespers service, which symbolically welcomes night into the church, also stood for the transition from life to death. Thus, immediately upon a cardinal’s death, clergy would gather in his home to sing the Office of the Dead, beginning with vespers, proceeding to lauds and matins. They would then process to the church with the body, where it might lie in state for a few days before being buried.Footnote ⁵⁷ A series of funeral masses would then follow, marking the passage of time since the departed’s death.Footnote ⁵⁸

The Office of the Dead, however, was not limited to its immediate funerary function. It was also said in remembrance of the dead, particularly on the anniversary of their dying.Footnote ⁵⁹ The chaplaincy that was endowed by Cardinal Lagraulas and overseen by San Luigi dei Francesci was charged with saying a Mass for his soul every day, so it is highly probable that the Office of the Dead was recited for the cardinal with greater frequency than merely once a year. The psalms recited by the chaplaincy during the Office of the Dead, be it once a year or more often, were carefully chosen to remind the worshippers of the sacrifice of Christ, the help and comfort that could be found in the Lord, and the rewards of faithful service to God. They also emphasized the crucial task of intercession.

The five psalms for the hour of vespers “have been selected, from time immemorial” from Psalms 109 to 147.Footnote ⁶⁰ These psalms are similar in theme and refer to the darkest hours of the faithful and their coming triumph through the Lord, particularly if they keep his commandments and are faithful servants. Durundus, in his Rationale Divinum Officiorum (1459), one of the most important theological commentaries on the liturgy, links these ideas to the evening hour, explaining, “for at this hour are intimated the tears of those for whom the sun of justice sets … and this will last until morning; that is, until the sun rises on the faithful.”Footnote ⁶¹ Psalm 114 beautifully illustrates this theme when the worshipper cries out, “The sorrows of death have encompassed me, the perils of hell have found me. I met with trouble and sorrow.” Later in the psalm, however, the worshipper finds peace in God who “showed mercy” and “delivered me,” saying, “For he hath delivered my soul from death: my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. / I will please the Lord in the land of the living.”Footnote ⁶²

However, an added emphasis was placed on these prayers, psalms, and hymns in the context of the Office of the Dead, as those who gathered to mourn or remember the deceased were not simply giving praise to God, but, more importantly, were praying on behalf of the defunct who could no longer advocate for him- or herself in this world.Footnote ⁶³ Thus, these services acted as a kind of intercession, as the assembled clergy prayed to God on behalf of the soul departed.Footnote ⁶⁴ With each psalm, the assembled clergy would have asked for and received God’s love and intervention, both for themselves and especially for their departed comrade.

The second part of the vespers is structured around a joyous hymn, the Magnificat. Since at least the time of Saint Benedict (ca. 480–547) and the early codification of the Roman rite (440–560), the singing of the Magnificat has been a consistent and enduring aspect of the vespers service.Footnote ⁶⁵ It remains the most recognizable trait of vespers. Taken from the exaltation of the Virgin at the Visitation (Luke 1:46–55), the Magnificat does not refer to death or suffering, but humbly and graciously praises God, who, like a benevolent guardian, looks after his charges. The hymn expresses Mary’s faith, wonder, and gratitude at being God’s chosen vessel.

The first lines recount Mary’s earthly role, her humility, and her reward for her faith in God. After having accepted her role as the Virgin mother of God and revealing this fate to her cousin Elizabeth at the Visitation, Mary sings,

Although Mary has experienced profound change, her canticle indicates that she is neither worried nor frightened. Instead, she rejoices, understanding that her immediate troubles are of little consequence and that her historical place as “blessed” is secure. The comfort that this long view of history, this humility, and this joy, must have offered to the faithful mourners and also to the dead would have been profound. Mary’s hymn reminds the mourners, speaking on behalf of the dead, to be optimistic about life after death, for, as Mary states, “he that is mighty hath done great things for me / … And his mercy is from generation unto generations.”Footnote ⁶⁷

Mary continues by listing the marvelous things that God has done for her and for all of the humble and poor. The Virgin exalts a God who has provided for those with no means, and has also withheld from the mighty and the wealthy. Finally, Mary reveals why she feels so blessed. The final line mentions “Abraham and his seed.”Footnote ⁶⁸ This reference is important for Mary as she is in the process of carrying on the line of Abraham and has just learned of her miraculous pregnancy with the Messiah. Through this act Mary is especially exalted, particularly by theologians such as Saint Bernard, who calls her “aqueduct” of God.Footnote ⁶⁹ Bernard emphasizes that, as the “aqueduct,” Mary mediates between God and man. She is the supreme intercessor of humanity, the conduit for all prayers, and a means for God to distribute grace in the world.

In a funerary context, this hymn reminds the mourners of their important intercessory function by referring to the consummate intercessor, Mary. Drawing together both the beginning of Christ’s life and his painful death, the Magnificat alludes to Mary as God’s vessel, which secures her position between God and man as she intercedes on behalf of the faithful. If the chaplains of the cardinal’s altar who prayed for Lagraulas’s soul in perpetuity needed any further reminding about their roles as intercessors for the dead, this would have come when they began to sing the Magnificat. When celebrating vespers for the dead cardinal, the assembled clergy would have been mirroring Mary’s role as intercessor and praying to God on behalf of a person whose voice had been silenced.

Saint Antoninus might also have resonated in the minds of the mourners, Lagraulas, and even the artist. The most prominent theologian of fifteenth-century Florence, author of the Summa Theologica (1477), and Florentine archbishop, Saint Antoninus helps to explain the presence of the joyous hymn in the midst of this mournful ceremony. He complicates the idea that Mary merely stood at the foot of the cross and set an example of righteous mourning for Christ’s followers. Although he never trivializes Mary’s suffering, he does question if abject grief was her only reaction. Led by her superior understanding and knowledge of the will of God, Mary stands at the foot of the cross to “wait for the salvation of the human race” through Christ’s sacrifice.Footnote ⁷⁰ Moreover, Saint Antoninus indicates that Mary offers Christ willingly to be sacrificed, saying, “she herself was ready to offer her Son to God for the salvation of the world.”Footnote ⁷¹ Through these actions, she becomes the “priestess of justice.”Footnote ⁷² Saint Antoninus, in this passage, places particular emphasis on Mary’s complicity with God’s plan. Savonarola, who loomed large in Michelangelo’s conscious, echoes the arguments of his Dominican brother.Footnote ⁷³ Savonarola likewise makes a case for a more nuanced understanding of Mary’s emotions during the Passion, saying repeatedly that she was “pleased, sad, and completely stupefied by the Holy Mystery and God’s great bounty.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Importantly, Saint Antoninus also indicates that it is through her suffering, her diligence, and her offering that she becomes the “mother of all men” and the sublime intercessor.Footnote ⁷⁵ Mary’s central role in the death of Christ and in the life of dying Christians is therefore further highlighted by the Magnificat, as Mary celebrates favored status with God. As a faithful woman, a model of female decorum, and as the priestess of justice, Saint Antoninus argues that Mary submitted once again to God’s will and provided yet another example of her sublime humility. Because of her total submission, Mary becomes the “mother of all men,” as well as an instrument and helper in the work of salvation.Footnote ⁷⁶

In calling Mary the “mother of all men,” Antoninus accords her another fundamentally important role: queen of heaven. Mary surely refers to this when she says that “generations will call me blessed” in the Magnificat. Although not officially made dogma until the twentieth century, Mary’s Assumption into heaven was a widely celebrated feast in the Catholic Church in the fifteenth century. Moreover, one of its staunchest supporters was one of the most famous members of Lagraulas’s Benedictine order: Bernard of Clairvaux. In Bernard’s sermons for the Feast of the Assumption, he outlines why her ascension into heaven is so important for Christians, particularly those contemplating life after death. Bernard describes Mary’s initial ascent and entrance into heaven as one of “exaltation” and “dazzling splendor.”Footnote ⁷⁷ However amazing the sight, Bernard takes care to remind the listeners that her rise into heaven merely prefigures their own. Encouraging his flock to believe in a final resurrection at the end of days and the heavenly reward, Bernard says, “Our great Queen has gone on before us, she has gone on, I say, and has been gloriously received, so gloriously that we, her poor servants, walk with confidence after our Lady.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Further, Bernard claims that “our exiled race has sent home an advocate.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Christians were exiled from the bosom of God, but Mary’s example gave them hope of their return to heaven and an intercessor, ready to bend the ear of God to help them on their journey.

The Magnificat certainly celebrates Mary’s humility, but it also establishes her critical roles as mother, intercessor, and queen of heaven. The universal hope for redemption through God after death and for Mary’s intercession are celebrated in the specific vespers services surrounding death and its commemoration, as well as in the vespers services of the paschal season and those associated with the hours of the Virgin. In his version of the vesperbild, Michelangelo celebrates similar themes of personal redemption and intercession.

The mourning for Cardinal Lagraulas, at his death and continuously afterward, as well as the predominant themes of that liturgy, must have been the point of departure for Michelangelo and Lagraulas when envisioning the Pietà and its ensemble in Santa Petronilla. The Pietà, like similar sculptures in French funerary chapels, would have reminded the assembled mourners and the paid chaplains of their intercessory role in praying on behalf of the cardinal, muted by death. When considering the Pietà in its ensemble, with the tomb monument of the cardinal grouped nearby, it would have been as though Lagraulas was a constant worshipper himself and a silent companion to the chaplains his estate paid to recite the Office of the Dead. After all, his grave marker displays the cardinal himself in effigy as though laid out on a funeral bier. With this sculptural companion attending the Mass alongside the chaplains and other assembled mourners, it would have seemed as though the cardinal’s funeral was perpetually in progress, thus making the mourner’s intercessory prayers as urgent as the day of his death.

Together, Michelangelo and the cardinal crafted an image that speaks to the sculpture’s liturgical and physical setting. Themes of hope, redemption, intercession, and humility are appropriate not only to the obsequies of the cardinal, but also to the larger context of Michelangelo’s sculpture—both the church of Santa Petronilla and the complex of Old St. Peter’s. These ideas must have been the point of departure for both the cardinal and the artist when envisioning the Pietà.

“Only bride, His Daughter and Mother”

At the center of the sculpture group, physically and theologically, is Mary—her emotional and physical reactions to the death of Christ offer in visual form the hope of redemption found in Christian death and in the vespers service. Michelangelo depicts her as the embodiment of the Magnificat and the Madonna envisioned by Saint Antoninus—the recently anointed mother of the world, priestess of justice, supreme intercessor, and co-redemptrix. In the humble voice with which Mary sings the Magnificat, the Madonna offers her life and her son willingly to be sacrificed to God. Mary’s bowed head, reminiscent of many Annunciation scenes, signals the Virgin’s prayerful piety, humble submission to the will of God, and sweet sorrow at the loss of her son. Michelangelo’s Virgin does not wail or shed tears at Christ’s wounds; neither does Mary pray as someone detached and knowing. Instead, her reaction seems to show the transitory nature of her emotional state. This sculptural Madonna explores other aspects of the Virgin’s reactions that day and indicate a kind of foresight expressed by Mary in the Magnificat. She trusts in the will of God because of her physical and spiritual connection to God through her pregnancy with Christ, which made her a facilitator, vessel, and collaborator with the Holy Spirit.

Grasping her son through her cloak, protecting the bodily sacrifice as a priest would the Host, Mary slightly elevates her son’s body, willingly offering him as an expiation of sin to both the viewer and, humbly, to God. In this incarnation, she is truly Antoninus’s priestess of justice, ready to assume her role as mother of the world and holding the sanctified Host. That the sculpture group has strong Eucharistic themes should not be a surprise, considering the close associations between vespers and the Eucharist. Durundus, in his commentary on the liturgy, explains that vespers marks the hour of Christ’s descent from the cross. Although this association between Christ’s sacrifice and the devotional hour would have been enough to ensure vespers’ association with the bodily sacrifice, Durundus also states that this was the hour of the institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper.Footnote ⁸⁰ Durundus even links the five psalms of the service to Christ’s five wounds.Footnote ⁸¹ Christ’s strikingly handsome body in the sculpture, then, betraying only minimal signs of his torture and execution, can be read as a symbol for the transubstantiated Host. He has been transformed from a humble sacrifice into the perfected flesh and blood of Christ, presented for the expiation of the sins of the viewers, the mourners, and the defunct. If Christ is the Host, then Michelangelo transforms Mary from humble mother to both priest and altar table, elevating and offering the body of her son.Footnote ⁸²

Mary’s left hand is upturned and slowly rising. It signals the humble strength of her offering—her only son—as both the living sacrifice for the faithful viewer and to God. The gesture, though, mimics the movement of her whole body. Although she bows her head, she also seems to be in the process of tilting upward. The subtle slumping of the Virgin’s torso is belied by the sharp upward diagonal movement of the drapery between her legs that leads the sharp vertical support of her robe behind Christ’s shoulders. Mary, in her hand, head, and body, seems to be straightening, even swelling upward. She is in the process of looking to the future and casting off her fear, her doubts, her mournful sorrow, as indicated by her inclined head. She moves upward, seeking God and acceptance. She shows a transition from the downtrodden mother at the foot of the cross to the woman who first spoke the triumphant words of the hymn: “My soul doth magnify the Lord / And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior.”Footnote ⁸³

The wonderful subtlety that Michelangelo brings to the Virgin’s movement shows her changing state of mind and, indeed, her changing status in the Christian world. Her understated movements toward the humble acceptance of God’s plan would not be nearly so inspirational or moving (particularly to a mourning worshipper) were they not tempered with her past sadness. The slight pout of her lips contrasts with her implacably smooth forehead. In the Virgin’s deftly changing facial expression (which changes particularly as one moves from right to left across the work), one reads both the sorrow that she is about to leave behind and the resolute faith with which she is about to accept and even praise the will of God. In short, Michelangelo’s Mary mirrors the state of emotional instability common to every Christian facing death or mourning: there is sadness, but there is also hope and trust in the promise of eternal life. Mary, in Michelangelo’s Pietà, reminds the viewer of the psalms of the vespers service, which both bemoan earthly sorrow and express faith in God for his coming deliverance. Psalm 129, for example, begins, “From the depths I have cried to thee O Lord: Lord hear my voice.” It ends, however, with assurances of help and guidance from the deity: “Because with our Lord there is mercy: and with him plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel.”Footnote ⁸⁴

The work also speaks to the complicated and changing role of the Virgin in the moments after her son’s death. As articulated by Saint Antoninus in describing her role at her son’s death, Mary ceased being simply the mother of God and became the mother to the world, the supreme intercessor, and a source of grace in her own right. Mary’s vital role in forging a path to heaven was recognized by previous generations who added two bronze angels to the sculpture, crowning Mary as the queen of heaven (although these were removed in 1927) (fig. 7).Footnote ⁸⁵ Michelangelo’s work captures her in the midst of this transition from humble to exalted mother—the moment between grief and sorrow, triumph and acceptance.

Figure 7. Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pietà, 1498–1500, statue before the removal of the bronze angels. Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica. Alinari Archives, Florence.

The transitory and complicated nature of the work, the emotions surrounding Christian death, and the various roles of the Virgin in Michelangelo’s rendering were captured by Giovambattista Strozzi (1504–71) in a 1549 poem he composed after seeing a copy of the Pietà installed in Santo Spirito in Florence:

The poem, much like the sculpture, explores the unique and often contradictory nature of Christian death and Mary’s role in the Christian mystery of redemption. In the “dead marble” the author sees the contrasting qualities of “Beauty and goodness / and grief and pity” as paradoxically “alive.” The very qualities of transition—between goodness and grief, life and death—are present in the sculpture. Strozzi understands the sculpture to be the visual expression of Mary’s impossible role as “Only bride, His Daughter and Mother,” or Christ’s only wife, daughter, and mother. As Christ’s mother, Mary brings the living sacrifice into the world as an expiation of sin, but she also mourns him as a mother. As his daughter, however, Mary is saved and given everlasting life through her son’s intervention and death. As his wife, Mary is queen of heaven, supreme intercessor, and mother of the world. In the sculpture, Strozzi, like many of his contemporaries, must have seen in Mary’s complicated expression and body position, as well as her preternatural youth, the state of flux between these various roles. As his mother, Mary mourns. As his daughter, she is grateful for his intercession on her behalf. As his wife, she humbly accepts God’s plan and assumes her new role. As a Christian viewer and mourner, we follow Mary as supreme exemplar in all of this.

Strozzi’s poem directly quotes Saint Bernard’s prayer to the Virgin at the end of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1320) in order to articulate these contradictory roles. In canto 33 of Paradiso, Saint Bernard opens his praise of Mary in the midst of educating the pilgrim by saying, “Oh Virgin Mother, daughter of your son, / most humble, most exalted of all creatures.”Footnote ⁸⁷ At this point in Paradiso, the pilgrim has climbed to the highest heights of heaven and is standing at the threshold of God. Strozzi’s use of Bernard’s words in this context indicates the degree to which Michelangelo’s sculpture is a heavenly vision. Adding to the visionary air of the work is the extremely high and glossy finish that Michelangelo puts on the marble, as well as the pure, snowy whiteness of the stone. The marble block is perhaps the purest that Michelangelo ever carved and the only one he ever polishes to such a high sheen. He finishes the work in a way that evokes the perfection of the heavens. As heavenly visions (and virgins, as the artist took pains to remind Condivi) are not bound by the constraints of age and time, the sculpture can speak to the holy mystery of redemption and Mary’s myriad and contradictory roles in that redemption.Footnote ⁸⁸ Indeed, Michelangelo’s sculpture is a perfect embodiment of these contradictory roles, as it is both fully, corporeally present and “humble” in its sculptural state, but at the same time visionary or “exalted.”

Mary’s transitions between roles and emotions—so reminiscent of the vespers service and Christian mourning—are so effective because Christ also simultaneously expresses several different states of being. Although Mary is the co-redemptrix of humanity, her son is the primary redemptor through his death on the cross, which is likewise explored in complex ways in this work. Strozzi’s concern that Christ might “reawaken himself from death” seems a real one when considering how Christ is carved. Christ’s body bears few traces of the torture he endured. The softness and pliability of his limbs and joints makes it appear as though he is sleeping and not suffering from rigor mortis. Christ’s state is more akin to sleep than death and his soft expression and perfect body anticipate, in visual form, the coming resurrection. There is still an acknowledgment, however, of the real and necessary state of Christ’s death. His wounds, although not gratuitously gory, are prominently displayed and the entire sculpture group would have originally been surmounted by a large wooden cross, reminding every viewer of the savior’s recent torture.Footnote ⁸⁹

What is clear from the work’s attempt to visualize the universal themes of Christian death in the context of the vespers service and the cardinal’s funerary monument is that Michelangelo and Lagraulas clearly meant for the work to have a larger appeal than its immediate setting would suggest. They chose to make the work substantially larger than almost any sculpted Pietà yet attempted. The work’s over-life-size scale, as well as its exploration of the complex and contradictory emotions attendant with death and mourning opens the work up to its larger context in Santa Petronilla and the Basilica of St. Peter’s (which marks an important tomb in and of itself). Unlike the vesperbilder of Michelangelo’s predecessors, this work does not focus solely on abject grief or on the prayerful example of Mary in mourning. Unlike other Pietàs, the work does not focus only on the moment of death at hand, but pushes beyond the temporal and physical limits of this world to remind the viewer of the coming reward of heaven.

That Michelangelo’s work transgresses temporal boundaries allows for a further investigation of the work’s signature, “MICHAEL-AGELUS-BONAROTVS-FLORENT-FACIEBA[T].”Footnote ⁹⁰ Michelangelo’s choice of verb tense—the imperfect faciebat—indicates that the sculpture is in a constant state of becoming. The work has been made by the sculptor, but it also continues to be made. Like Mary’s state of emotional flux and Christ’s rather tenuous clinging to a sleep-like death, Michelangelo’s signature insinuates that the very rock of the marble itself could change, stretch, even move. Moreover, it alludes to the constantly changing interaction of viewers and mourners with the work. The viewer’s movement across the work encourages catharsis, from a frank appreciation of the sculpture’s beauty, to a contemplation of the ultimate sacrifice of Christ and his mother. As part of a funerary ensemble that included the cardinal’s tomb monument, the process of enacting and reenacting the cardinal’s funeral rites would have been ongoing in front of the image. In this sense, the signature, like the sculpture itself, participates in the past commemoration of the cardinal, the present mourning, and the figure group’s future role in helping chaplains pray for Lagraulas’s soul. One does not have to specifically mourn the cardinal in order to understand the work’s power and the comfort it could provide to the faithful. The added layer of understanding that comes with relating the work back to the cardinal’s death, funeral, the Office of the Dead, and specifically the vespers service, however, is invaluable.

The numerous messages of Michelangelo’s Pietà, as well as their near-universal applicability to the Christian condition, not to mention the sculpture’s incredible physical beauty, ensured its lasting fame and use in the Basilica of St. Peter’s, even after Santa Petronilla was destroyed. The sculpture’s first major move resulted in its being placed in the secretarium of St. Peter’s.Footnote ⁹¹ It was at this point that the venerable cardinal’s tomb marker was banished to the Vatican grottoes and the work’s physical and liturgical context was lost. The work’s second location reveals the historic view of the work as primarily Marian, as it was incorporated into the funerary chapel of Sixtus IV in 1568.Footnote ⁹² The pope’s long campaign to make the immaculacy of the Virgin doctrine was recognized in the chapel’s dedication to the Immacolata. In 1609, however, Sixtus’s chapel was deconsecrated, and the sculpture was moved again to a temporary choir. It was not until 1749 that the work was lodged in its present location, in the chapel to the right of the entrance, where it continues to be an important site of pilgrimage for the faithful.Footnote ⁹³ Unlike the funerary monuments of his fifteenth-century contemporaries, Cardinal Lagraulas’s extraordinary sculpture remained in St. Peter’s even after the Constantinian basilica was torn down and rebuilt.

Ironically, however, the widespread appeal of the sculpture has rendered its original liturgical and theological context unreadable. Throughout its travels, the work has sloughed off its original commissioner and funerary context and has become more of an aesthetic object than an expression of the piety of a specific moment at the end of the fifteenth century. Perhaps more troubling, however, is that the work has become little more than Michelangelo’s first major artistic statement, his first foray into the art world of Rome, and his only signed sculpture. The context of the work, its commissioner, and the theological message that was meant to be imparted from the work have all disappeared, eclipsed by Michelangelo’s emerging talent and stature. Michelangelo’s considerable iconographic innovation in the service of liturgy and worship has thus also been lost.

In order to properly understand the sculpture it must be thought of, first and foremost, as Cardinal Lagraulas’s tomb monument. When seen in this light, it is clear that the work effectively expresses sorrow, acceptance, joy, redemption, and the other innumerable and contradictory emotions attendant with Christian death. The sculpture highlights and magnifies the liturgy of death and commemoration, just as the cardinal originally intended.