La Virgen de la Asunción y San Miguel Arcángel

For most of his career Dosso Dossi worked for the Este dukes of Ferrara, painting fables and mythologies for one of the most literary courts in Italy; the poet Ariosto was writing his epic there in the same years. This huge altarpiece was a more public commission, made around 1533 for the cathedral of nearby Reggio Emilia. It stacks two subjects in a single frame. High up the Virgin rises into heaven, and below her the Archangel Michael drives a rebel devil down out of the sky. It hung in Reggio Emilia for centuries before Parma's gallery bought it in 1907. At well over two metres tall, it was built to be read from far below.