Stairs of Paradise

BY GIUSEPPE FRANGI

Michelangelo sculpted this Virgin of the Stairs while still very young. He always kept the sculpture with him, and it was still in his nephew Ludovico’s house, as Vasari reports, before ending up in the collections of Cosimo II. Stylistically, Michelangelo shows his attention to the dramatic vitality vibrating through Donatello’s bas reliefs, for which the term “stiacciati” (flattened) was coined. But in terms of a definition of the subject, numerous interpretations have been offered. We see Mary seated in profile on a stone cube. With an extraordinarily protective gesture, she pulls her cloak over the sleeping Baby Jesus. Our Lady’s gaze, however, is trained on the scene taking place next to her: there is a staircase and there are some cherubs, one of whom, leaning over the balustrade, holds a piece of cloth together with another cherub who can just be glimpsed on Mary’s left. The balustrade is in the shape of a cross, and the sheet stretched behind the Mother and Child could foreshadow the Holy Shroud. The stairs evoke the epithet of the Blessed Virgin as the Scala Coeli leading to Paradise. In 1477, a book had been published and widely circulated, entitled Libro della scala del Paradiso (Book of the Stairs of Paradise). The book’s thesis derived from an idea of St Augustine that saw Mary as a metaphor for a staircase or ladder, along which God can come down to man and man can climb to heaven.

Mary’s gaze is that of a mother who foresees the destiny awaiting her Son. Besides, starting in the fourteenth century, the sleeping Child is a foreshadowing of His death. Michelangelo’s Virgin of the Stairs is thus a reminder of Christ’s Passion, and a preparation for the four extraordinary versions of the Pietà, the great masterpieces of the artist’s maturity.