Tucked down a side street just east of Piazza Maggiore, Santa Maria della Vita is a small Baroque church that hides one of the most powerful sculptures in Italy. The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Niccolò dell'Arca, finished around 1463, is a group of seven life-sized terracotta figures arranged around the body of Christ.
What sets the work apart is the unbearable intensity of the figures' grief — mouths open in screams, robes flying as if in a wind, the whole composition frozen at the moment of greatest emotion. It is unlike anything else in Renaissance art, and a short detour from the main square that most visitors miss.