Collection: Death of Mary

ARTIST: Museum Religious Art Classics

ARTWORK NARRATIVE:

Artist: Bartolomeo Vivarini – c. 1485

The Virgin is shown dead, surrounded by the apostles, and received into heaven by her son Christ. Saints Lawrence and Stephen stand to either side. The landscape is barren on the left, green on the right, contrasting death to life. Painted in 1484 for the Certosa at Padua, the work had a frame decorated at the top with a carved figure of Saint Michael. From a successful family of painters in Murano, Bartolomeo Vivarini offered Venetian clients a more conservative style than that of Bellini—one influenced by the linearity of Mantegna.