The story
Walk up the nave of the Frari, and before you reach the middle of the church you can already see Titian's Assumption of the Virgin over the high altar, framed by the arch of the marble screen in front of the friars' choir. The Virgin rises on a cloud above the apostles toward God the Father. The altarpiece is close to seven metres high, one of the largest in Venice, and it was unveiled in May 1518.
The church belongs to the Franciscans, the frari or friars who gave it its everyday name, and its brick Gothic body went up through the 14th and 15th centuries. Titian returned within a year for a second commission. In the left aisle hangs the Pesaro Madonna, ordered by Jacopo Pesaro, a Venetian bishop who had commanded the papal fleet against the Ottomans in 1502. Titian set the Virgin high and to one side on a flight of steps, with Pesaro kneeling below and a soldier with a banner leading in a turbaned prisoner. He worked on it from 1519 to 1526.
Titian died in Venice in 1576, the year of a great plague, and was buried in this church, a short walk from his two altarpieces. The large marble monument over his grave was added only in the 19th century.
