Faces of Mary

       Last week, we watched a very interesting video on the different depictions of Mary in artwork. It is amazing how many actual art pieces there are that solely focus on the Virgin Mary or Mary holding the baby Jesus. The day after I watched the video, my art history teacher took our class out on a field trip to the Uffizi Gallery. When we first walked through the rooms on the top floor, I noticed that almost all of the paintings were focused on religious subjects. Surprisingly, Mary was featured in more paintings than Jesus himself. Also, when I visited the Vatican, in St. Peter’s Basilica, Michelangelo’s Pieta was the most precious piece of art in the entire church. The Pieta is a marble sculpture of Mary holding the lifeless body of her son, Jesus Christ. It stands behind bulletproof glass in an effort to protect it from intruders (In the 1980’s, a man tried to destroy the statue in a terrorist act against the Catholic Church because he believed that the Pieta was the single most important piece of art in the Vatican.) All in all, I now realize that Italians adore Mary as much as they adore Jesus.