As a follow up to yesterday's post let's look at art inspirations linked with Easter that may come us from two artworks - Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome and Giuseppe Sanmartino's Veiled Christ in Naples.
Michelangelo's Pietà (1498-99) represents Mary grieving upon the body of her dead Son. In his version of the Pietà, Michelangelo balanced the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with naturalism, creating a pyramidal structure that, from Mary's head, widens progressively down to the base.
Fashion-wise the drapery of Mary's dress is particularly intriguing since it conceals her body, contributing to give the statue a monumental appearance and a serene fluidity that is mirrored in the abandonment of the dead Christ on her lap.
Preserved in the Sansevero Chapel, Sanmartino's statue (made in 1753) represents the dead Christ with his head resting on two pillows and features a very striking element, a draped veil covering the figure. The veil looks extremely real: its ethereal transparency symbolically separates the viewer from Christ the man and the Son of God, but also contributes to give visitors the impression they are standing in front of a real body.
A legend says that some of the veils and nets covering the other statues in the chapel were made with a secret alchemical process the mad Prince of Sansevero Raimondo di Sangro - known for being an anatomist, scientist and inventor - had discovered to turn fabrics into marble. So, who knows, maybe the veil is the result of the process of fabric calcification into marble that the prince had passed to Sanmartino.
Can you think about other religious artworks linked with Christ's death in which the themes of draperies and transparency may be particularly inspiring?
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