The Assumption of the Virgin

When this panel was commissioned in 1513, Palma was still a newcomer in Venice, a young painter from the mountains near Bergamo trying to make his name in a city that still had the aged Giovanni Bellini at work and Titian just starting out. The syndics of a Venetian confraternity, the Scuola di Santa Maria Maggiore, paid him 50 ducats for it, real confidence to place in an outsider. He gave them the Virgin lifted to heaven on a bank of angels, and worked an old legend into the lower half: the apostle Thomas, who reached the tomb too late to see her go, catches her belt as she lets it drop to him. This is thought to be the first large work Palma finished after settling in Venice.