The Assumption of the Virgin
Peter Paul Rubens
PETER PAUL RUBENS, c.1612. OIL ON PANEL.
The Virgin Mary is a font of true light as she is assumed, meaning to ‘raise up’, into the heavens, accompanied by a multitude angels. At her feet, 12 apostles, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary’s two sisters are bathed in her divinity and her beauty. Ruben’s interpreted this story in his own way, seeing her ascension as analogous to the rising of the sun, as her purity and divinity is often talked about as a source of light. So Mary becomes the sun, the knot of angels that surround her bleed in and out of the clouds that they become. It is a work of reverence and praise, but from a distance it could be easily misinterpreted as a landscape. This duality was intentional not just as a compositional allegory but as an audition. This work was a presentation sketch for a larger painted version of the high altar of Antwerp Cathedral, and Rubens employed every tool in his arsenal to show his mastery and secure the job.