The Piet

Almost a year has passed since a deranged Hungarian-born Australian named Laszlo Toth attacked Michelangelo's Piet`a in its chapel at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. With 15 hammer blows Toth knocked off the Madonna's left forearm, dented her veil, smashed her nose and chipped her left cheek (left).

The restoration of the 6,700-lb. statue was carried out by ten Vatican technicians, who were considerably aided in their task by the existence of a plaster cast of the Piet`a that had been made 30 years ago. Using a sort of plastic surgery, they restored the shattered nose with a mixture of marble dust and special resins that duplicate the luster of the original stone.

"The incomparable work has been happily restored," Pope Paul VI declared proudly last week as he unveiled the Pieta to the public once more (center). A 15-ft. wall of nonglare, bulletproof glass now shields the Madonna from her admirers. But behind the glass, insists one Vatican official, is a masterpiece that is "still the work of Michelangelo, not of the restorers."

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