The concept of a “living image” was presented within one of Michelangelo's later ‘sculptural’ poems. This “living image” seemed to have manifested itself in the form of the Mary-Jesus bind within the “Madonna and Child” and the “Pieta” that somehow also embody the four existential realms of the human condition - birth, death, life and love.

The continuous Mary-Jesus bind from the moment of birth to the hour of death captures an archaic and sacred “living image” that at once embodies the interplay of psychoanalysis and religion. Various psychoanalytic theories have been applied to Michelangelo's “Madonna and Child” sculptures (See: Liebert, 1983; Leites, 1986) and the chronological series of his “Pieta” sculptures has been described as a “spiritual autobiography” (Barricelli,1993:597).

This paper will attempt to explore the psychoanalytic and religious implications of Michelangelo's “living image” as expressed in his four dyadic sculptural creations: Madonna of the Stairs , St. Peter's Pieta (1500), Madonna of Bruges (1506) and Rondanini Pieta (1564). It will draw on Winnicott's conceptual framework of the “maturational process” in an attempt to apprehend the creative movements and manifestations of the “living image” through and in stone respectively -aptly described by Michelangelo, himself, as the living stone of the artist's own self (Labriola, 1987: p. 328).

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