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This legend of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin has afforded to the artists seven distinct scenes.

1.  The Angel, bearing the palm, announces to Mary her approaching death.  The announcing angel is usually supposed to be Gabriel, but it is properly Michael, the “angel of death.” 2.  She takes leave of the Apostles. 3.  Her Death. 4.  She is borne to the Sepulchre. 5.  Her Entombment. 6.  Her Assumption, where she rises triumphant and glorious, “like unto the morning” ("quasi aurora consurgens"). 7.  Her Coronation in heaven, where she takes her place beside her Son.

In early art, particularly in the Gothic sculpture, two or more of these subjects are generally grouped together.  Sometimes we have the death-scene and the entombment on a line below, and, above these, the coronation or the assumption, as over the portal of Notre Dame at Paris, and in many other instances; or we have first her death, above this, her assumption, and, above all, her coronation; as over the portal at Amiens and elsewhere.

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I shall now take these subjects in their order.

The angel announcing to Mary her approaching death has been rarely treated.  In general, Mary is seated or standing, and the angel kneels before her, bearing the starry palm brought from Paradise.  In the frescoes at Orvieto, and in the bas-relief of Oreagna,[1] the angel comes flying downwards with the palm.  In a predella by Fra Filippo Lippi, the angel kneels, reverently presenting a taper, which the Virgin receives with majestic grace; St. Peter stands behind.  It was the custom to place a taper in the hand of a dying person; and as the palm is also given sometimes to the angel of the incarnation, while the taper can have but one meaning, the significance of the scene is here fixed beyond the possibility of mistake, though there is a departure from the literal details of the old legend.  There is in the Munich Gallery a curious German example of this subject by Hans Schauffelein.

[Footnote 1:  On the beautiful shrine in Or-San-Michele, at Florence.]

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The death of the Virgin is styled in Byzantine and old Italian art the Sleep of the Virgin, Il Sonno della Madonna; for it was an old superstition, subsequently rejected as heretical, that she did not really die after the manner of common mortals, only fell asleep till her resurrection.  Therefore, perhaps, it is, that in the early pictures we have before us, not so much a scene or action, as a sort of mysterious rite; it is not the Virgin dead or dying in her bed; she only slumbers in preparation for her entombment; while in the later pictures, we have a death-bed scene with all the usual dramatic and pathetic accessories.

In one sense or the other, the theme has been constantly treated, from the earliest ages of the revival of art down to the seventeenth century.