Mary holds the dead Christ across her lap, her face calm and strikingly young for the mother of a grown man. Made for a French cardinal's funeral chapel in Old St Peter's, the group rises as a pyramid, with Mary's vast drapery disguising how hard it is to cradle an adult body. The wounds are reduced to small marks.
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The sash across Mary's chest carries Michelangelo's signature, the only one on any of his works. Vasari says he added it after hearing the statue credited to another sculptor.
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