- Title
- Assumption of the Virgin Mary
- Date Made
- 18th century
- Medium
- Ink on paper
- Dimensions
- 10 3/8 x 6 7/8 in. (26.35 x 17.46 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.75.113.1
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Although not mentioned in the New Testament, in Western Christian art during the 12th century it became a popular narrative scene from the Life of the Virgin Mary. In the Renaissance art of the 15th-16th centuries, representations of the Assumption are sometimes conflated with her Coronation as the Queen of Heaven. The Assumption was a common subject for illustrating the ceilings of Christian cathedrals.
In this Mughal copy of an unidentified European engraving, the Virgin is being borne aloft by cherubim (putti) to Heaven, where she is to be crowned by Christ. She radiates a corona of light, and her hands are clasped in prayer in the iconographic tradition of medieval European images of the Assumption. Beneath her, the Twelve Apostles gather around her empty tomb. They either stare up in awe at the Virgin or are weeping. A European fortress is visible in the distant background in the center of the composition. The composition, figures, modeling, architecture, and perspective are rendered in a faithful Western artistic style, rather than some of the elements being Indianized as done in M.75.113.4
See also M.83.105.5a-b.
- Selected Bibliography
- Larson, Gerald et al. In Her Image: The Great Goddess in Indian Asia and the Madonna in Christian Culture. Santa Barbara: UCSB Art Museum, University of California, 1980.
