One of the few sensible changes made to the calendar in the post-Conciliar reform is the exchanging of the places (more or less) of two Marian feasts, those of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and of Her Queenship. Both of these were added to the general calendar by Pope Pius XII, the first in 1944, the second ten years later. The latter was originally assigned to the last day of May because of the popular custom of keeping May as a Marian month, even though there was no general Marian feast within it. The former was placed on the octave of the Assumption for no discernible reason, other than the fact that before it was put on the general calendar, some places kept it on the Sunday after the octave; but the Carmelite Rite, one of the first of the religious orders to adopt it, had it in the same place it was given in the Novus Ordo, on the day after the feast of the Sacred Heart.
As I am sure our readers know, the Holy Father Pope Leo asked that today be observed as a special day of prayer and fasting for the peace throughout the world. This made me think of a Marian title which has no formal liturgical expression, and so would be covered by the feast of Our Lady’s Queenship, which I am pretty certain is the reason why he chose today, “Queen of Peace.” This title was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XV when he added it to the Litany of Loreto in November of 1915, as the First World War was approaching its second Christmas.
He also commissioned this statue of the Virgin for the basilica of St Mary Major in Rome, the first major public artwork in the city to be displayed with the new title on it. It was completed and unveiled in 1918, the work of a sculptor named Guido Galli.
I have always thought there was something very Italian about this statue, the way the Madonna is the one to raise Her hand, seemingly less in blessing, and more as if to say, “End this war!”, the “useless slaughter”, as Pope Benedict himself called the war which did not yet need to be distinguished as the first of its kind. Her other hand extends over Christ’s bare side, covering the place where He will be wounded with a lance by a soldier, as if she were protecting all the young men threatened by the terrible violence of war. Her expression is almost stern, as if to express her disapproval, and makes for a notable contrast with the more cheerful face of the young Jesus.
Michelangelo died in 1564, but even three-and-a-half centuries later, every sculptor who worked in Rome lived under his shadow, and there are some interesting references to and contrasts with his work here. The complicated folding of the Virgin Mary’s robes, especially around her head, the deep spaces to either side of her neck, and the deep cut into the marble under her arm, are all very much a tribute to the great Florentine’s Roman debut, the Pietà.
But Galli was not afraid to do things that Michelangelo did not do, not because he couldn’t do them, but because he couldn’t muster up any interest in doing them. For Michelangelo, there is only one subject worthy of the sculptor’s art, the human form. Galli, on the other hand, included both a dove, the symbol of peace, on the left, and a rather complicated pile of flowers on both the left and right. Michelangelo also believed, with a conviction that could well be described as dogmatic, that sculpture is an art of subtraction, of finding the image and releasing it from the block that imprisons it. For this reason, he absolutely rejected the technique employed here, by which pieces made of other materials are added to the work, such as the metal olive branch in Jesus’ hand, the halos, and the throne, which itself is made of several different pieces of stone, and detailed with metal bosses.
The whole ensemble, including the panel behind the statue and the lamps to either side, is a rare example of early art nouveau (or “stile Liberty”, as it is often called in Italian) in an Italian church; rare, because with the coming of fascism to Italy in 1922, the whole style fell very much out of fashion, withering under official disapproval of it as American (or French), and therefore decadent.
