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In 2018, German artist Michael Trigel asked a homeless man Rome To pose for a drawing, thinking that if he ever needed to paint the first Pope he would make a perfect model for St. Peter.
Seven years later, the man’s likeness is on display in the Vatican, a kind of reunion that occurred by unlikely coincidence.
It’s a story both big and small, of art and faith and a human tragedy that caught the attention of Pope Francis: Homeless German man Burkhard Scheffler died of cold on the side of St. Peter’s Square in 2022.
a commission in germany
the saga begins GermanyWhere Trigal won the commission in 2019 protestant The cathedral in the city of Naumburg to commission a new central panel for its altarpiece by the Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder. The panel replaces the original that was destroyed in 1541 during the Reformation, the upheaval that swept parts of Europe in the 16th century due to the rise of Protestantism.
Both of Cranach’s side panels survive. Trigel, a Catholic convert, jumped at the possibility of “collaboration with Cranach”.
“He had in mind the idea of completing this altarpiece again, which seems to me a beautiful gesture – not to heal these wounds of the 16th century but to ease them, to heal them,” he said in an interview in his studio. leipzig,
St. Peter found his place
Trigel planned his painting and painted the encounter he had with a homeless man in Rome in 2018.
The man took his place as Saint Peter among the saints gathered around Mary and the infant Jesus. Trigel said it was important that his subjects not be idealized figures, but rather figures who the viewer would feel were people “who can do something with me in the here and now, who are not just historical.”
Saint Paul was based on the one Rabbi Trigel created in Jerusalem, while Mary was based on the artist’s daughter. Behind was the Protestant pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an opponent of the Nazis, who was executed in 1945.
St. Peter of Trigal has a beard, wears a red baseball cap and carries a small key – a reference to the Biblical key to heaven often associated with the saint.
The artist found his saint sitting and begging at the entrance of a Roman church. As he was about to give the man the money, Trygel recalled, “He looked at me and at that moment I thought, if you ever needed a Peter for a picture, he would be your Peter – that flowing beard and those alert eyes.”
Trigel asked the man in Italian if he could draw and take his picture, and the man just nodded – “so I didn’t know what country he was from.”
a tragedy in rome
What Trigel didn’t know was that his St. Peter’s had faced a lot of trouble after the 2018 contest.
A man named Burkhard Scheffler suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Italy’s strict lockdown, fewer and fewer people stepped out to provide aid and food to those in need.
Scheffler was arrested in May 2020 after he threatened someone with a knife if they refused to give him change. He was sentenced to three years in prison and released in late 2022.
Many people in the Vatican knew Scheffler, who had become weak in prison. Vatican journalist Gudrun Seller later recalled, “His hands, which were always warm, had become cold.”
Scheffler died of cold on the night of November 25, 2022.
Pope honors the homeless
His death caught the attention of Francis, who had made caring for homeless people around the Vatican a priority. Under Francis’s supervision, the Vatican installed showers, a barber’s shop and a clinic in the colonnade of St. Peter’s. Francis’ beggar went out to distribute sleeping bags on cold nights.
Hours after Scheffler’s death, a Vatican spokesman issued a statement saying that he had been cared for by the Vatican’s charity office, but “unfortunately, the rain and cold last night aggravated his delicate condition.” The spokesman said that in his prayers that day Francis “remembered Burkhard and all those who are forced to live without a home in Rome and in the world.”
Shortly afterward, Francis said in his weekly Sunday prayer: “I remember Burkhard Scheffler, who died three days ago under the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square: died of cold.”
And the Pope returned to the topic in his Palm Sunday sermon in April 2023. “I think of the German so-called street man, who died under the colonnade, alone and abandoned. He is Jesus for each of us. Many need our closeness, many have been abandoned.”
Francis requested that Scheffler be buried in the Teutonic cemetery on the Vatican grounds, along with many German-speaking priests, pilgrims and dignitaries. His simple grave is in the small pilgrim section, in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica and a few yards from the actual tomb of St. Peter.
dispute at the altar
Back in Germany, Trygel spent three years working on the altarpiece of Naumburg Cathedral, but a problem arose.
There were concerns that the Trigel-Cranach altar might cause the building to lose its place on the UNESCO World Heritage List. UNESCO experts felt that this hindered the overall view of the western chapel, including the famous sculptures. In July, regional authorities said the decision was that the altar could remain – but that it would have to be displayed elsewhere in the cathedral.
While that discussion was going on, the idea came up to lend the altar to the Catholic chapel of the Teutonic Pontifical College at the Vatican, which was a residence for German-speaking priests adjacent to the cemetery. The chapel has its own altarpiece from Cranach’s original period.
putting the pieces together
And then an art expert attached to the Vatican in the Teutonic Chapel identified St. Peter of Trigel as someone other than Scheffler.
“Someone said, ‘This guy with the red hat, we know him because he was living here in St. Peter’s Square,'” said Monsignor Peter Klasvogt, rector of the Campo Santo Teutonico, as the complex is known. “That was a moment you’ll never forget.”
The altar is now on a two-year loan to the chapel, which is a stone’s throw from Scheffler’s grave, and just a few steps from the tomb of St Peter.
When Trigel learned that his altar might end up next to Scheffler’s grave, he recalled thinking, “There can’t be so many coincidences.”
With the advent of painting, “the story gets another outcome and another exit, and that’s so wonderful to see,” Clasvogt said. “We honor them with the altar, we honor them with their tomb and we pray for them here in the church.”
After the debate about the location of the altar in Germany, the coincidence also attracted the artist.
“If this whole controversy was necessary for this picture to go to Rome and for this man to be seen again, for him to get a name, … for people to pay attention to him and remember him, then this whole Naumburg project was really worth it to me,” Trigel said.
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Geir Moulson and Kerstin Sopke reported from Leipzig, Germany. Pietro De Cristofaro contributed on behalf of Leipzig.
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Associated Press religion coverage is supported by the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content.
