Understanding Jesus’ First Disciple

The Virgin Mary. Though debates abound about her role and significance in different sects of the Christian faith, she is a favorite figure for artistic representation in almost every denomination. In an Education Week lecture held on August 15, Associate Professor Jennifer Haraguchi (Counter-Reformation Italy, Women’s Studies) alluded to Mary’s artistic significance by saying, “Art has inspired Christians for centuries, portraying the Savior’s birth and death through the eyes of the woman considered to be His first disciple.”

These representations can be instructive: art depicting Mary can indicate understandings of her role, as well as demonstrate broader religious trends. Haraguchi’s lecture, called “Finding Christ through Mary in Late Renaissance Italy,” explored two works in different mediums: Meditation for Holy Friday, a prose piece by Vittoria Colonna; and Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, a sketch by Michelangelo that strongly reflects his famous Pietà. Haraguchi explained that the two pieces present complementary images of the Virgin Mary as an exemplar of faith and love, and both representations reflect the influence of a spiritual trend of the day: Ignatian spirituality.

Ignatian spirituality is a movement which emphasized affective piety—in other words, meditating on details of the Savior’s life in order to put one in a spiritual state of mind and gain greater understanding. Ignatian spiritualists “would study the scriptures and study accounts of stories of Christ's life. And then they would meditate on it. They would try to imagine what was happening at the time,” Haraguchi explained. One such scene they would contemplate was the Crucifixion and its aftermath.

Pietà for Vittoria Colonna demonstrates Ignatian spirituality through the lens of a visual artist. “Michelangelo is making this scene come alive with all the emotion possible. It is not the static art that we’ve seen,” Haraguchi said. She then quoted Elder Ulisses Soares, saying that the Pietà “depicts the authenticity of the physical and emotional details of a scene of suffering.”¹ In both works, Michelangelo captures Mary suffering in vivid detail as she supports Christ’s body. She serves as resting place for Christ, and she also offers Him to the viewer. Both this symbolic depiction of Mary and the detail Michelangelo depicted in his art are a result of careful meditation on the scene itself.

Colonna’s Meditation for Holy Friday reflects and expands upon Michelangelo’s visualization of Mary. In the following excerpt, Colonna inserts herself into the scene at the base of the cross in order to gain a greater understanding of what Mary went through. The passage reads, “I see the sweet mother, her heart full to the brim with most burning love, tied by so many chains in her love of the son that they cannot be expressed in ordinary language. Neither can we understand how she made herself a resting place for her dead son . . . to make of her own almost-dead body a sepulchre in that hour.”

This vivid language reinforces Michelangelo’s imagery of Mary as the most important example of loving Christ: in Colonna’s writing, like in Michelangelo’s sketch, Mary serves as Christ’s resting place in death, demonstrating her devotion to Him. Colonna expands on Michelangelo’s visual representations with further emotional and personal details. Haraguchi explained, “This is typical of the time, to fill in the details to help [readers] in their mental prayer and their meditations.”

Both of these works demonstrate Ignatian spirituality while artistically capturing attitudes of the time toward the Virgin Mary. Michelangelo and Colonna viewed the Virgin Mary as an example of devotion and love, supporting Christ (literally and figuratively) until the very end. They depict Mary as an exemplar that Christians of all denominations hope to emulate.

^{1. Ulisses Soares, “Becoming a Work of Art” [Brigham Young University devotional, Nov. 5, 2013], 1, speeches.byu.edu.}