Think, Laugh, Cry Issue #24

If we can live without art…why does it feel like we can’t? A sculpture of sorrow dares to make grief beautiful…why does it move us so deeply?

THINK

It might be the most beautiful sculpture ever created.

Carved from cold, dead marble, it somehow breathes. Her face — impossibly soft, impossibly sad — gazes down at the body of her son. His limbs hang limp, lifeless, delicate.

The folds of her robe cascade like silk. His ribs rise gently beneath ruined skin. Every detail exact. Every contour perfect. And yet the subject is death. Not just any death — the death of a child in the arms of his mother.

This is Michelangelo’s Pietà.

And it doesn’t make sense.