Le Christ avec l'âme de la Vierge

This little tempera panel in Ferrara was once the top of a larger picture. Around 1462 Andrea Mantegna, court painter to the Gonzaga lords of Mantua, painted a Death of the Virgin for the chapel in their castle. At some point the panel was cut in two. The lower part, the apostles gathered around Mary's deathbed, hangs today in the Prado in Madrid. This upper fragment is what came next in the story: Christ rising in an almond of cloud, carrying his mother's soul up to heaven. Mantegna shows the soul not as the usual small child but as a slender little figure held in his arms. Along the bottom edge you can still make out the curve of an arch that once joined this piece to the scene below.