Resurrection in Cheapside

Since it was first built early in the 16th century, the chapel of London's Mercers' guild has been twice destroyed--once by the Great Fire of 1666, again by Hitler's blitzes in 1941. This year workmen began digging into the ruins of the chapel, located in the Cheapside section of London, preparatory to rebuilding it again. As they worked their way into the soft earth around the vaults, their shovels clinked against a buried stone object.

The object turned out to be a sculptured slab, 6 ft. 5 1/2 in. by 2 ft. 3 in., showing the dead Christ laid out on a rough, shrouded bier awaiting entombment. In the tragic dignity of the recumbent figure and in the calm anguish of the face, the sculptor had achieved a work of striking realism; the body lies alone with none to mourn it, and the effect is one of infinite loneliness. Art experts called the statue a first-rate example of Renaissance sculpture, and archaeologists pronounced it "one of the major archaeological finds made in London during this century."

Last week the statue was being dried of its centuries-old dampness before being shown to the public. Experts had decided that it dated from the early 16th century, and that it was done in limestone from Bath, probably by an unknown English artist. After some diligent detective work, the experts also produced a theory about how the statue got where it was. The fact that it lay on its side five feet below the floor at a point roughly in the center of the chapel indicated that it had been deliberately buried.

Presumably the statue was hidden to save it from the anti-Papists in Henry VIII's time. The Mercers' chapel was in trouble with reformers as early as 1535 because of windows showing King Henry II doing penance for the murder of Thomas `a Becket in 1170. To save the statue from the fate of the windows, which were destroyed, somebody hid it underground, thus preserved its Renaissance beauty for the 20th century. Eventually, it will be restored to the rebuilt Mercers' chapel, long since a place of worship for the Church of England.

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