What happened to the Pietà in 1972?

On Sunday 21 May 1972, a geologist named László Tóth climbed over the rail in front of the Pietà in St Peter's Basilica. Shouting that he was Jesus Christ, he struck Michelangelo's marble about fifteen times. Mary lost her left arm at the elbow, part of her nose and one eyelid.

The man with the hammer

Tóth was 33. He was born in Hungary, had moved to Australia in 1965 and came to Rome in 1971. It was Pentecost Sunday, one of the great feasts of the Church. He brought a geologist's hammer, the kind made for breaking rock.

Bystanders pulled him away from the statue. One of the first to reach him was an American sculptor visiting from St Louis, Bob Cassilly.

Tóth was never put on trial. In January 1973 an Italian court declared him a danger to society and sent him to a psychiatric hospital. Two years later he was deported to Australia.

Putting the Pietà back together

About a hundred pieces of marble lay on the chapel floor. Some onlookers pocketed them as souvenirs. At least one was later sent back from the United States.

Restorers at the Vatican Museums decided the repair should be invisible to the naked eye. They spent months matching the fragments, then fixed them in place with glue mixed with powdered Carrara marble. Where pieces were missing, as on the nose, they made new ones, using an old plaster cast of the statue as their guide.

Less than a year after the attack, in 1973, the Pietà went back on show in its chapel.

Why it is behind glass

It came back behind a screen of bulletproof glass. For nearly five hundred years only a rail had stood between visitors and the marble. Since 1973 they have looked at it from several steps away.

In 2024, before the Holy Year of 2025, the old panels, clouded after fifty years, gave way to nine new bulletproof panes and new lighting.

The statue's other famous story is cut into Mary's sash: the only signature Michelangelo ever carved.

Where to stand

Go in through the main doors of St Peter's and turn right. The Pietà is in the first chapel on the right, behind its glass. Find Mary's left hand, held open at her side. That is the arm Tóth broke off at the elbow in 1972.

Hear it where it happened

The Trevlo tour of St Peter's tells this story at the Pietà, its fourth stop, after the obelisk, Bernini's colonnade and the façade where his bell tower came down. Then it takes you up the nave to the bronze canopy and under Michelangelo's dome. Six stops, about twelve minutes of listening, at your own pace.

The first stop is free to play on this page, and your first tour in the app is free.