Assumption of Mary in art

[3] By the end of the Middle Ages, large and crowded altarpieces gave the artist the opportunity to show his virtuosity in composition, colouring and figure poses.

Her hands are usually clasped in prayer in medieval images, but later may be thrown wide, as she gazes up, as in Titian's highly influential altarpiece for the Frari Church (1515–18) in Venice, which agitated the previously decorous apostles.

[5] Examples include works by El Greco, Rubens (several compositions),[6] Annibale Caracci, and Nicolas Poussin, the last replacing the Apostles with putti throwing flowers into the tomb.

[12] From the later 16th century some images show a more intimate depiction in the in aria type of sacra conversatione, with a few selected saints replacing the crowd of apostles, and often the Virgin hovering not much above them.

Catholic doctrine, still emerging when most of these were painted, has declined to specify whether Mary had died before her bodily Assumption, although the slightly varying accounts given one after the other in late versions of the Golden Legend agree that she did, and was placed in a tomb, from which she was raised up three days later.

[11] Though once common in Catholic art, the last major treatment of the Death of the Virgin by itself was Caravaggio's painting in the Louvre, who caused a stir by depicting her as an untidy and realistic corpse, which some considered a breach of decorum, though compatible with the doctrine of the Church.