Who Knew
“Three things are needed for success in painting and sculpture:
to see beauty when young and accustom oneself to it,
to work hard, and
to obtain good advice.”
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Who knew?
The leading sculptor of the Renaissance was an art forger!
True.
In 1496, the young Michelangelo carved a sleeping Cupid figure in marble and dirtied it up to appear like one of the ancient Roman statues then so wildly popular. The Sleeping Eros was sold to Cardinal Raffaele Riario through an art dealer who allegedly “aged” the work by burying it in his vineyard. Happily, the Cardinal did not press charges against the young artist, who went on to be considered the greatest sculpture, painter and architect of the Renaissance, gifting the world with The Pieta (1499), David (1501), the frescoed ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-15-12), and The Last Judgment (1541).
With Michelangelo’s death in 1564, the High Renaissance drew to a close and the door opened to a new era in art and architecture – the Baroque.
In popular mythology (and probably in reality), Gian Lorenzo Bernini was only eight years old when he carved a stone head that “was the marvel of everyone” who saw it, according to one of his contemporaries.
Bernini was introduced to sculpting by his father, Pietro, an accomplished but inconsequential Florentine, who received a papal commission and moved his family to Rome, when young Gian was seven years old. In Rome, he was introduced to ancient Greek and Roman art, as well as the Renaissance masters.
At thirteen, he stunned the art world with a psychologically piercing bust of the surgeon Antonio Coppola. A notorious fabulist, Bernini claimed that he began creating “speaking likenesses” years earlier. Nonetheless, his Coppola sculpture marked the beginning of his career as a master sculptor and creator of architectural wonders. His first biographer asserted, it was “common knowledge, that he was the first to unite architecture, sculpture and painting in a way that they together make a beautiful whole.”
The young artist also captured the attention of Pope Paul V, who reportedly declared, “We hope that this youth will become the Michelangelo of his century.” Eventually, Bernini accepted the commissions of eight popes and, with the grandeur of his Baroque fountains, piazzas and monuments, transformed 17th Century Rome as Michelangelo had helped shape Florence and Rome a century earlier.
While Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647-1653), the Baldachin of St. Peter’s Basilica (the ninety-four-foot-tall bronze canopy that rises over the Basilica’s high altar and the traditional burial site of St. Peter, the first pope), created when he was still in his twenties, and the awe-provoking colonnade in front of the Basilica are among his most famous works, two early and lesser known sculptures provide an artistic and theological commentary on one of the most critical moments in American history.
The significance of the Anima Damnata and Anima Beata – executed around 1619 and now located in the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See – has long been disputed.
Based on unpublished documents of the time and now preserved at the Roman Historical Archives (Archivo Storico Capitolino), David Garcia Cueto, Arts History professor at the University of Granada, argues that the two marble heads – long considered among the most important works of Bernini’s youth – are depictions of a nymph and a satyr. In a 2015 Sculpture Journal article, Cueto challenged the long-held belief that the two reflect a Damned Soul and a Blessed Soul.
We’d like to offer an alternative to both arguments:
Damnata makes visible the anger of the January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted the United States Capitol, screaming for the lynching of the Vice-President of the United States and clamoring “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you.” It is the face of those who would martyr.
The quiet poise of the Beata reflects History’s accounts of the final minutes of Judeo-Christian martyrs and men and women of all faiths who accept death with a profound confidence in the unspeakable goodness of God.
“…They were furious and gnashed their teeth at him
…Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven
and saw the glory of God.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man
standing at the right hand of God.’
At this they covered their ears and,
yelling at the top of their voices,
they rushed at him, dragged him out of the city
and began to stone him…
While they were stoning him,
Stephen prayed, “Lord, receive my spirit…
Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’
When he had said this, he fell asleep.”
Acts 7:54-60
In a radio broadcast days after Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer denounced Fuhreprinzip – the Nazi leadership principle synonymous with dictatorship; the broadcast was cut off he could finish. Bonhoeffer became a leader of the Confessing Churches – a movement of Lutheran and evangelical pastors and theologians who refused by to co-opted by the Nazi government for propagandistic purposes.
After a brief teaching tour overseas, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1935 and led the theological/intellectual opposition to the Nazis, eventually losing his freedom to lecture and publish, Arrested in April 1943, he spent the next two years acting as a counselor and pastor to prisoners of all denominations.
On April 9, 1945 – only days before the American liberation of his POW camp at Flossenburg, the 39-year-old pastor was executed by hanging after declaring:
“This is the end – for me, the beginning of life.”
Lucian Tapiedi (1921-1942) was one of eight Anglican clergy, teachers and medical missionaries and among the total of 333 church workers of all denominations killed during the Japanese invasion of Papua New Guinea. Anglican Bishop Philip Strong instructed Anglican missionaries to remain in their posts despite the danger:
If we all left, it would take years for the Church to recover from our betrayal of our trust. If we remain — and even if the worst came to the worst and we were all to perish in remaining — the Church would not perish, for there would have been no breach of trust in its walls, but its foundations and structure would have received added strength for the future building by our faithfulness unto death.
When Japanese forces conspired with indigenous people to betray the European and Papuan Christians, Lucian, about 20 years old, declared “I will stay with the Fathers and Sisters.” He was joined in the decision by about ten others who were eventually gathered up by the local villagers, turned over to the invaders, then taken to the beach where six of them were beheaded. The youngest and last to be beheaded was a six-year-old-boy
After many years serving in Kenya and despite the dangers involved, Consolata Missionary Sister Leonella Sgorbati joined a community of nuns hoping to open the only Nursing Training Center in Somalia. She was gunned down on September 17, 2006 as she crossed the road between the hospital where she had finished her lessons and the convent where she lived. Her last words: “I forgive. I forgive. I forgive…”
Miguel Pro joined the Jesuits in 1911, just as the Mexican Revolution was getting underway; because of the governments virulent anti-clericalism, he was forced to complete his studies in Spain; he was ordained in 1925 and returned to Mexico the following year, serving briefly as an “underground” priest, despite the anti-Catholic provisions of the Mexican constitution, which allowed for the imprisonment of priests who criticized the government or wore clerical garb outside their churches. After sixteen months of celebrating Mass and hearing confessions in secret, Pro was arrested and - without trial – sentenced to death. Mexican authorities, in a fool’s mission to show Pro as a quivering coward, summoned the press. On November 23, 1927, Pro was led from his prison cell to the courtyard where the firing squad would end his life. He stopped and blessed the soldiers, paused, knelt and prayed quietly. Offered a blindfold, he refused, instead facing his executioners with a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other; he extended his arms in imitation of Christ and shouted, “May God have mercy on you. May God bless you. Lord, Thou knowest I am innocent. With all my heart I forgive my enemies. Long live Christ the King.”
“I believe that Good will win over evil,
that Creativity will win over destruction
and that Peace will win over war…
My belief in Jesus who makes all things new is growing.
God has never abandoned me—
I've felt alone and lonely
but I'm learning to wait and He is present even in this mess.”
Sister Carol “Carla” Piette, MM
American Maryknoll Sister Carla Piette, MM began her mission journey in Chile in 1964, before accepting the invitation of El Salvador’s Archbishop (now Saint) Oscar Romero for Maryknoll to send Sisters to work with the poor of his country. She arrived there on March 24, 1980 – the day the archbishop was assassinated. Together with her friend and co-worker from Chile, Sister Ita Ford, Carla began working with the Church’s Emergency Relief Team for Refugees and, during the evening of August 23, the two volunteered to take a recently released political prisoner home. As they crossed the River El Zapote, a flash flood came crashing down the ravine; miraculously Ita and the two men with them were saved. Carla’s last act was to help push Ita through the side window of their Jeep just before the current swept it away. Her body was found at about 11:00 a.m. the following day – five months after her arrival in El Salvador.
In a mass of the Resurrection, the Maryknoll Sisters recalled that after her funeral in El Salvador
“All the people marched in procession down the winding road to the cemetery; accompanying Carla as she had so often accompanied them. They buried her in a simple grave in their poor little cemetery. They covered the grave with flowers.
“Carla used to say she just wanted to be with the ‘poor old beat-up people.’ As she was with them in life, she is with them still. The poor little beat-up cemetery is on the outskirts of a poor little town. The flowers brought by the people are the offerings of the poor.’
On July 11, 2017, Pope Francis issued the Apostolic Letter Maiorem Hac Dilectionem – “On the Offer of Life,” creating a new path to sainthood that is not martyrdom but is similar to it. Men, women of all ages who put their lives in danger out of compassion for others and died as a result may now be eligible for recognition as saints and martyrs. In Francis's own words:
“It is certain that their heroic offering of life, suggested and sustained by charity, expresses a true, full and exemplary imitation of Christ and, therefore, is worthy of that admiration which the community of the faithful usually reserved for those who have voluntarily accepted the martyrdom of blood or have exercised the Christian virtues to a heroic degree.”
We choose to see the anger, the bile, the true nature of the insurrectionists and those who aided and abetted them in Bernini’s Anima Damnata.
And the souls of the martyrs – quiet and confident in their love of their God and their God’s love for them – in the Anima Beata.
The world – our Today World – is a world of martyrs. The martyrs of antiquity and today’s whose lives are taken in odium fidei – out of hatred for their faith - Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and others. And Pope Francis’s “martyrs of Charity.”
But be certain of this: Not one of those who attacked the seat of American Democracy and Freedom on January 6, not one who walked away and was later arrested and sentenced to prison or probation for insurrection, not the weaponized 35-year-old Air Force veteran who travelled from San Diego, California to join the mobs shouting “Hang Mike Pence” and “Nancy…Nancy…” and was shot as she attempted to crawl through the window of a barricaded door inside the Capitol…. Not one was a martyr – a martyr of odium fidei (killed in “hatred of the Faith”) or of Charity. To call her, to call them “martyrs” is to profane the faith, lives, the service and the deaths of martyrs.