The Assumption of the Virgin

This panel, more than three metres tall, was the centre of an altarpiece for the Augustinian monastery of Asciano, a small town under Sienese rule. Low down, behind Saint Thomas and the empty tomb, is a panorama of rocks, little trees and fields, and the cluster of buildings on a hillside, with two churches, may be Asciano itself. The river winding through the valley may be the Ombrone, which crosses a nearby plain named after the Archangel Michael. Michael appears again on a side panel of the same altarpiece, still kept locally in the museum at Palazzo Corboli, along with a Saint Augustine. The year comes from a 19th-century guidebook that recorded an inscription dated 1474, probably on a frame now lost. Scholars have noted that the scorched hills look like the Sienese countryside in August, the month of the feast of the Assumption.