Consummate artist that he was, Michelangelo conceived and sculpted this work for his own tomb, which was to have been erected in Rome in Santa Maria Maggiore, as he himself wished.There is a great feeling for the tragic in this sculpture, most of all in the expression of the Madonna and in the inexorably sinking body of Christ. The features that you can see on the face of Nicodemus are those of Michelangelo himself, as this was very probably a self portrait. The work was sculpted between 1550 and 1553 and was restored and completed by one of Michelangelo’s pupils, Tiberio Calcagni.