Lombard school; XVI century.

Lombard school; XVI century.
"The Assumption of the Virgin".
Oil on canvas. Relined,
Measurements: 161 x 108 cm.
The Assumption of the Virgin was one of the most important Marian themes in the Christian iconography of the late Renaissance. The composition is articulated in two clearly differentiated registers: the heavenly realm, where the Virgin is elevated and crowned in glory, and the earthly plane, occupied by the apostles gathered around the empty tomb, whose attitudes express astonishment, devotion and recollection. This organization responds to models widely spread in northern Italy, where narrative clarity and legibility of the devotional message were essential.
From the formal point of view, the work shows a balanced language, still rooted in the quattrocentista style in its compositional order, but enriched by a greater chromatic density and a growing interest in the expressiveness of the figures. The apostles, treated with physiognomic and gestural individualization, reveal the Lombard sensibility for moderate naturalism, while the celestial space is resolved by means of a luminous and enveloping atmosphere, in which the figure of Mary becomes the visual and theological axis of the scene.
The painting is based on an engraving of The Assumption of the Virgin by Albrecht Dürer, whose diffusion was remarkable in the Lombard region and exerted a lasting influence on local iconography. This graphic model also served as a guide for related works, including the version made by Giovanni Battista Moroni for the Chiesa parrocchiale di Sant'Alessandro della Croce, in Borgo Pignolo (Bergamo), as well as the one preserved in the Chiesa di San Leone Papa, in Cenate Sopra. The dependence on the Düreresque prototype is evident both in the general arrangement of the figures and in certain gestures and attitudes, reinterpreted here with a warmer and more narrative pictorial language, in keeping with the Lombard tradition.
The work falls within the field of altar painting or great public devotion, intended to accompany the liturgy and collective contemplation. As a whole, it constitutes a significant testimony of the Italian assimilation of Nordic models and their adaptation to an aesthetic and spiritual context of its own, characterized by the synthesis between compositional rigor, doctrinal clarity and a profoundly human sensibility.