Assunzione della Vergine

In 1518 Titian was still a young painter with a name to make, and the Franciscan friars of the Frari in Venice had handed him their high altar. What he unveiled that May was nearly seven meters tall, the largest altarpiece in the city, and it did not behave the way Venetian altarpieces were supposed to. The old style kept its saints calm, still and evenly lit. Titian instead sends the Virgin surging upward on a bank of cloud, arms open, her red robe blazing against gold, while below the apostles throw up their hands and God waits above. There is a story that the friars were unsettled by all that motion until buyers came sniffing around, at which point they kept it. It made Titian overnight the leading painter of Venice, a position he would hold for almost sixty years. It hangs today over the same altar it was built for, still framing the friars at prayer.