I love Michelangelo. He took sculpture out of the stiff, remote enclosures of the Gothic and gave birth in marble to a warm Christian humanism, unprecedented and unsurpassed.
That the holy warmth of his inner vision found its full expression in cold hard stone is consonant with the living paradox of the Gospel message, the Incarnation, surpassing the understanding of the proud.
I know I could sit in front of any one of his Pietàs all day contemplating, and then some.
A mentally disturbed geologist who made messianic claims to himself took a hammer to Michelangelo's most well known Pietà in 1972. The sculpture, one of the greatest Christian masterpieces, endured significant damage.
Venerable Pope Paul VI, upon being notified of the horrific act of vandalism, said, "...Satan is entered in the rooms of the holy buildings. He hides
himself, he dissimulates, he seduces, divides, slanders. But it's him,
ever him: the prince of darkness, the impoverished angel, the first and
last cause of evil in the world."
Source for quote.
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