Strata: Where Is It?

Michelangelo’s Pietà is surely one of the most moving and most famous sculptures ever created by man, depicting—as it does with infinite sadness—Jesus’ mother Mary cradling the lifeless body of her crucified son.

How many people who come to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome to see this exquisite 15th-century sculpture can cite the chapter and verse in the New Testament that the sculptor has depicted? How many BAR readers are able to do this?

One thing we can say for sure: You who are reading these words and looking at this picture cannot do it.

This scene, which has been a favorite subject of artists for hundreds of years, is not in the New Testament. The Four Gospels all tell how Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, took him down from the cross, wrapped him in linen and buried him in a tomb, but throughout all this there is no mention of his mother Mary. As Ena Heller, executive director of the Museum of Biblical Art in New York, points out, “This scene is a medieval invention, first imagined in the writings of mystics attempting to identify with Christ’s suffering.”