Miracle of the Shattered Madonna

Miracle of the Shattered Madonna

About the Writer:  Janet Graham

Janet Graham is an English composer, music educator and music therapist. She was born in Consett on 4^th June 1948 and studied composition at the Royal Academy of music.

In this work of “Miracle of Shattered Madonna” Janet has described the condition of “Pieta” The statue of Virgin Mary after the attack by Madman. Whole story is about the reparation process done by scientists for 10 months to make statue as it is.

Miracle of the shattered Madonna

The story starts with the description of the location of the beautiful Madonna’s statue. The name Madonna is derived from Italian word “Ma Donna”, meaning ‘My Lady’. It is most commonly refers to Mary, mother of Jesus. The statue is located at St. Peter’s Church in Rome. Usually people who are worshippers of Mary visit this place. It was always crowded with tourists.

-About the statue

The name of the statue is “Pieta” which means “The pity”. It is a work of the famous painter Michelangelo. It is situated in St. Peter’s Church in Vatican City of Rome. This work depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. The Madonna is represents as being very young for the mother of an approximately 33 year old son. Various explanations have been suggested for this. One is that her youth symbolizes her purity, as Michelangelo himself said to his biographer.  The shine of the transparent marble statue is mesmerizing. The statue reflects the sad beauty of Madonna’s youthful face.

-Attack by a Madman

One day when tourists were watching the beauty of Madonna, a man from crowd with his newly purchased hammer strike almost half of the statue into several pieces. Soon the guard has caught him. The man is 34 year old Australian. He is mad and woman-hater, who said God, had ordered him to ‘kill’ the Madonna.

-Broken condition of Madonna

The left arm of the Madonna was broken into three pieces at the elbow, wrist and the fingers. The tip of the nose was also damaged. The veil (transparent material or net) were injured in several places. One eyelid was dangerously damaged.  There are fifty large broken pieces and 150 smaller lay on the floor. Other pieces had turned out into powder.

-Restoration process

Many states or country offered help for the reparation but Rome has already started working on it. There were team of seven scientists and restorers. The director of scientist Research laboratory Dr Vittorio Federici is the leading figure under his guidance the process of restoring the statue began. The task was done in ten months. Firstly they did experiment in laboratory for four months and then they have applied all the successful experiments on the original statue.  Luckily they have Plaster cast (A copy of the original statue), so that they can do the needful repair by looking on it.

The first task is about gathering all the fragments of the statue. Some of the pieces are missing which later on returned by post when the men who have taken the pieces during attack heard the news of restoration.  The men were an American tourist and a worker of hospital.  But still many pieces are missing.

The scientists have filled the missing part with the matching material with same transparency as like the original statue.  Some missing fragments are recreated by Giusepe Morresi with semi liquid mixture of plastic and marble powder. A glue is used which gets hardened when dried up and it can also be corrected by using Alcohol.  But still scientists are not able to maintain the translucent shine at some places where the mark of grease lies.  No chemicals worked. Later on these stains were successfully removed by cellophane after drying the statue with infra-red lamp.

Each and every time photographs were to be taken to find out minor errors so that the restorers can remove it.  They worked on face on November 13^th because they need so many experiments before working on face so that the gentleness and softness of the face could not be lost. 

The glue which is applied on statue is supported by wooden plates but it flattened the new pieces, therefore they removed it and pasted it again with successful attempt. The left broken arm was attached with a steel rod and filled with glue by pumping the glue upwards. At last they have washed the statue with pure water. Workers have purposely left one mark on veil as an evidence or proof of attack.

In this way Madonna regained her sweetness of expression.

Conclusion

This story symbolizes scientific progress of modern world which makes everything possible. There is nothing impossible.  Human brain is the most advanced tool for any kind of restoration. So if violence increase on the negative side then scientific development will also takes drastic change on the positive side to keep balance.