Day 48 - 17th Feb
SCREAMING ITALIANS
Part sculptor, part kid
No gentle hammer.
Everyman, journeyman—
Laszlo Toth.
Doing the big thing,
the big stupid thing.
Shattered the nose like snow.
Fifteen blows,
one for every mystery.
Bang bang bang,
tap tap tap,
chip chip chip.
"I am Christ, risen from the dead,"
or so he is claimed to have said.
Cassily got a good grab of his beard—
comical, no doubt,
rallying to the Queen,
a vinegar grip pulling
the big man
back into the sea
of screaming Italians.
We all grab for chins and come away with beard.
We all fall from marble basilica
down to the madhouse
or our own cement land.
When they were all away at their own masses,
the meek returned.
In the night,
with hammers resheathed,
they took out instead wee brushes—
brush brush brush—
and restored her nose.
A single inflection.
One image.
Ashes now,
burnt and of no consequence,
made again
from slowness and dust.
Niall Campbell
Today, the algorithm picked up on my previous interest in Michelangelo’s Pietà and sent me a convergence of two recurring themes: the journeyman doing something crazy—seemingly unhinged, with no clear agenda—who becomes momentarily noteworthy, drawing bemused global attention; and the harmless man who, despite himself, does something irrevocably damaging.
This time, the algorithm served up the image of a man being pulled downward—Laszlo Toth.
On the 21st of May, 1972, during the Feast of Pentecost, Toth entered St. Peter’s Basilica and, without preamble, vaulted over a balustrade. Armed with a geologist’s hammer, he brought it down on Michelangelo’s masterpiece. I am Jesus Christ—risen from the dead! he shouted as he struck, fracturing Mary’s arm, chipping her eye, and breaking off a piece of her nose.
A fireman and an American sculptor, Bob Cassilly, were among those who restrained him. Fragments of shattered marble scattered across the floor; some were retrieved, others pocketed as grim souvenirs. The Vatican, after much deliberation, undertook a painstaking restoration—choosing, in the end, to erase the damage entirely. A miracle, unmarred.
What struck me, in an oddly comforting way, was how little impact Toth himself made. A moment of global horror, then silence. His digital footprint is minimal. He spent two years in an asylum before being quietly deported to Australia, and after that—nothing. Whether he is alive or dead is irrelevant. It is as it should be.
Because at its core, this was not some grand act of defiance or ideology. It was, in the final tally, just a deeply unwell man, caught at the intersection of mental illness and messianic delusion, who took the most extreme path available to him. He was stopped with the exact amount of force required, dealt with pragmatically, and allowed to fade back into obscurity. The damage was real, but the cultural equilibrium was swift to restore itself.
It is difficult to imagine the same outcome today.
The modern internet takes no interest in equilibrium. Consider the sheer gravitational force of collective distraction. The moment of greatest geopolitical volatility in decades—Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—was briefly, yet absolutely, eclipsed by Will Smith slapping a comedian at the Oscars. A war that reshaped global alliances displaced, even if only for a moment, by a mild slap.
Compare that to the hammer blows to the Pietà, the literal defacement of something considered divinely inspired. There was no permanent cultural reckoning. No endless discourse cycle. No one tracking down Toth’s old classmates for comment. No hashtags. Just the quiet work of restoration and then—onward.
Bob Cassilly, the man who helped pull Toth down, later became something of a folk hero in St. Louis. His most famous work was City Museum, a sprawling, interactive playground built within an abandoned shoe warehouse. He died in 2011 while working on his final project—Cementland, an attempt to transform an industrial wasteland into something playful.
The contrast is sharp. Michelangelo’s chisel sought divinity in stone, uncovering what was already there, waiting to be revealed. Cassilly’s vision was something else entirely—noble in its own way, but of a different nature. There is nothing ambiguous about the name Cementland.
And in the end, that is the divide:
One man laboured to reveal perfect form from marble. Another sought to shape something new from concrete and rebar.
One remains eternal.
Everything else is ashes and dust.