Both for its earnestness and its noble religious sentiment it is an act of worship to look at it, and the days and nights spent in its execution must have been periods of the heartiest religious devotion and sorrowing love.

The old sculptor intended this work to have been his monument.

The unfinished head of Nicodemus, who sustains the body of his dear Lord, is his own portrait, and, unfinished as it is, expresses the deepest devotion and sadness.

Vasari saw this work in progress, and gives us a glimpse into the home-life of the aged worker, who was never content out of his workshop, and spent his sleepless nights working at this huge marble with a paper cap on his head, in which he stuck a lighted candle to see by.

The solitary figure of the old man in the vast and dimly lighted studio, groping round the inchoate marble; the stillness of the night, broken only by the sharp click of the mallet and the grating of the chisel, is a picture of many of the bravest hours of his old age.