A Portrait of the Pope as a Dying Man
"E troppo vero," the pope said of the painting: "It is too real." That would be Pope Innocent X, commenting on his own portrait by Diego Velazquez. The vicar of Christ on Earth, as the Spanish master captured him, has the shrewdly appraising eye of a police interrogator. In a crimson cape, on a crimson throne, he radiates worldly power and perfect self-possession. His hands, jeweled and manicured, dangle with languid ease from the snowy lace of his sleeves. The pope knows who he is, and, beware: He knows who you are too.
What would Velazquez have made of John Paul II? In his prime, John Paul -- like Innocent and even more than Innocent -- cut a fine figure. Was he not once named best-dressed man of the year? He had, in his prime, a look that could kill. One saw it in 1983 when he faced down the fiery Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega at a public Mass in Nicaragua. At what was to have been the moment of confrontation, the fearless revolutionary, facing that look, suddenly seemed a querulous child.
Innocent (1574-1655) came of age in Italy at a time when Protestantism, having engulfed Northern Europe, threatened to engulf all of Europe, but he lived to see Protestantism contained, as the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended Europe's religious wars in a draw. John Paul came of age in Poland at a time when communism, having engulfed Eastern Europe, threatened to engulf all of Europe, but he lived to see the Soviet Union in retreat and its empire demolished. Triumphant? Not quite, either one, and yet noticeably undefeated. If any artist could build the historical complexity of such a moment into a portrait, it was and would be Velazquez.
And yet the Velazquez moment for John Paul is now 15 years behind us. It might take a Lucian Freud to capture the spectacle of grotesquerie and human ruin that has lately filled the balcony above St. Peter's Square. The pope, suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease, made the choice to die before our eyes.
What have his fellow PD sufferers thought of his way of coping with their common condition? No poll has been taken, but a relative of mine who suffers from the disease wrote me just days ago in dismay that what was done to Terri Schiavo -- by which my relative meant a prolongation of death -- might be forced upon her. She has placed in her refrigerator a copy of her living will, her do-not-resuscitate statement (now strengthened by a do-not-feed codicil), her list of prescription drugs, her power of attorney, and the like. Paramedics go first to the refrigerator, she explained, "to see if you have any drugs they need to know about." If you put a message on the door and keep your papers inside, you have a fighting chance of having your wishes honored.
