パッセリーニの聖母被昇天

Andrea del Sarto signed the contract for this altarpiece in 1526, agreeing a price of 155 florins with Margherita Passerini, who wanted it for her private altar in a church outside the walls of Cortona. Her family was on the rise. A Passerini kinsman, Cardinal Silvio, was at that moment effectively running Florence for the absent Medici. The panel stacks two scenes as Renaissance painters often did, the apostles crowded around the empty tomb below and the Virgin carried up to heaven above. Andrea worked in Saint Margaret, a nod to the woman who paid for it, and Saint Nicholas, the family's protector. A century later a Medici grand duke bought the picture for the palace collection in Florence, where it still hangs.