It marked a new direction in Titian's style, reflecting his awareness of the developments in High Renaissance painting further south, in Florence and Rome, by artists including Raphael and Michelangelo.

The agitated figures of the Apostles marked a break with the usual meditative stillness of saints in Venetian painting, in the tradition of Giovanni Bellini and others.

[2] It was perhaps originally rather shocking for the Venetian public, but soon recognised as a masterpiece that confirmed Titian's position as the leading artist in Venice, and one of the most important in all Italy, a rival to Michelangelo and Raphael.

The Franciscan order whose church the Frari is, were always keen promoters of this and other aspects of Marian theology, in particular the related doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, then still a matter of live controversy.

Most Catholics believed that this took place after a normal death (usually three days after in tradition), but some that Mary was still alive when it happened, a question that Munificentissimus Deus in 1950 was careful not to settle.

They are shown in a variety of poses, ranging from gazing in awe, to kneeling and reaching for the skies, "monumental figures ... massed in collective movement, united with shadow, heroic gestures are given a silhouette of unprecedented boldness".

[9] The high altar is a very long way from the nave, and the view of it is restricted by an elaborate stone choir-screen of 1475, with a round-headed arch in the centre, and a pulpit at each end.

The rounded top of the painting allows it to be framed neatly by the choir-screen arch for a viewer standing at the central axis of the church even at the back of the nave, though from there it appears tiny.

The painting is framed by an extension of the altar in marble and gilding, which matches not only the round top of the choir-screen arch, but (in broad terms) the scrolling decoration around it.

[20] He wrote that "the oafish painters and the foolish masses, who until then had seen nothing but the dead and cold works of Giovanni Bellini, of Gentili, and of Vivarino .... which were without movement or modelling, grossly defamed that picture.

Additionally, the organ pipes that had been reinstalled directly behind the painting in recent decades were found to cause significant vibrations to some sections of the altarpiece, adding further risk to fragile areas.

[27] "Pietro Edwards, director of the Restoration of the Public Pictures of Venice for many years from 1778 and a crucial figure in the history of conservation, popularised the use of mastic as an easily removable varnish and demanded that retouching be restricted to areas of paint loss.

"[28] The painting is frequently compared to the Transfiguration by Raphael (now Vatican Pinacoteca), whose period of execution overlapped with Titian's, beginning slightly later, probably in 1517, and soon ending after the artist's death in 1520.

... Form and content are one, and both works have that internal balance and organic unity of parts which makes the High Renaissance a normative period in the history of European art.

So strong is this pattern that when our attention is not deliberately concentrated, the forms are partly lost in it, and it is only by conscious effort that we attach the gesticulating limbs to individual bodies.