The pietà is a statue of the mother Mary mourning over her dead son Jesus Christ. This one was found inside a coffin during excavations in the graveyard of the former cloister of St Gertrude, on Amsterdam’s Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. As far as we know, the cloister was built shortly before 1432. The chapel which would have held the pietà, was constructed in about 1450. The statue has been damaged, probably during the iconoclastic fury of 1566 when fanatic Protestants rampaged through the street and ransacked Catholic churches. Later, presumably to protect it, the pietà was hidden by the nuns.