 The pose echoes Michelangelo's "Pietà", with the poet cradled by an idealised figure of his mourning wife.Weekes, however, depicts not a heroic nude in the neo-classical tradition but a bloodless corpse, and realistic details, including seaweed wrapped around his arm, recall the particulars of Shelley's death by drowning in Italy.The monument was the subject of contemporary critical acclaim, but St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, where Mary Shelley was buried, refused to take the work, and it was installed instead in Christchurch Priory.