Michelangelo's Pietà is often seen as the ultimate symbol of undisturbed peace, yet its pristine Carrara marble has been shaped by human rage on two separate occasions. This episode traces the statue from its 1498 commission by a French cardinal for a funeral chapel in the old St. Peter's Basilica through the structural puzzle of draping a grown man across a woman's lap, a problem Michelangelo solved by making Mary a hidden giant buried in heavy drapery arranged as a pyramid. We also explore why Mary looks younger than her son, drawing on the biographer Condivi and a paradox from a 14th-century Italian epic poem.

From there the story turns chaotic: the overheard rumor that led a jealous 24-year-old to carve his name across Mary's sash, the 1964 ocean voyage to the New York World's Fair in a floating crate with a locator beacon, the conveyor ...