Interesting that Michelangelo's Pieta (I'm scared of trying to put accents on letters in Mudcat posts!) shows the dead body of Jesus draped across the lap of a Mary who looks even younger than him, as opposed to the middle-aged woman that might have been expected. In addition, the body of Jesus shows little sign of his suffering. Michelangelo's aim seemed to have been to depict beauty rather than death. He's said to have claimed that a chaste Mary, unaffected by typical sexual desire, would have maintained her youthful beauty. Another explanation could be that, paradoxically, Mary might have been depicted, as the rest of us are supposed to be, as a child of Christ, in spite of her being the woman who bore him. Intriguing. I saw the sculpture in 1968, when we good Catholic schoolboys were able to file slowly past and kiss the outstretched foot of Jesus. A few years later, a lunatic attacked the statue with a hammer. since its restoration it's been kept behind bullet-proof glass.