9.  Correggio.  Cupola of the Duomo at Parma, 1530.  This is, perhaps, one of the earliest instances of the Assumption applied as a grand piece of scenic decoration; at all events we have nothing in this luxuriant composition of the solemn simplicity of the older conception.  In the highest part of the Cupola, where the strongest light falls, Christ, a violently foreshortened figure, precipitates himself downwards to meet the ascending Madonna, who, reclining amid clouds, and surrounded by an innumerable company of angels, extends her arms towards him.  One glow of heavenly rapture is diffused over all; but the scene is vast, confused, almost tumultuous.  Below, all round the dome, as if standing on a balcony, appear the apostles.

10.  Titian, 1540 (about).  In the Assumption at Venice, a picture of world-wide celebrity, and, in its way, of unequalled beauty, we have another signal departure from all the old traditions.  The noble figure of the Virgin in a flood of golden light is borne, or rather impelled, upwards with such rapidity, that her veil and drapery are disturbed by the motion.  Her feet are uncovered, a circumstance inadmissible in ancient art; and her drapery, instead of being white, is of the usual blue and crimson, her appropriate colours in life.  Her attitude, with outspread arms—­her face, not indeed a young or lovely face, but something far better, sublime and powerful in the expression of rapture—­the divinely beautiful and childish, yet devout, unearthly little angels around her—­the grand apostles below—­and the splendour of colour over all—­render this picture an enchantment at once to the senses and the imagination; to me the effect was like music.

11.  Palma Vecchio, 1535. (Venice Acad.) The Virgin looks down, not upwards, as is usual, and is in the act of taking off her girdle to bestow it on St. Thomas, who, with ten other apostles, stands below.

12.  Annibale Caracci, 1600. (Bologna Gal.) The Virgin amid a crowd of youthful angels, and sustained by clouds, is placed across the picture with extended arms.  Below is the tomb (of sculptured marble) and eleven apostles, one of whom, with an astonished air, lifts from the sepulchre a handful of roses.  There is another picture wonderfully fine in the same style by Agostino Caracci.  This fashion of varying the attitude of the Virgin was carried in the later schools to every excess of affectation.  In a picture by Lanfranco. she cleaves the air like a swimmer, which is detestable.

13.  Rubens painted at least twelve Assumptions with characteristic verve and movement.  Some of these, if not very solemn or poetical, convey very happily the idea of a renovated life.  The largest and most splendid as a scenic composition is in the Musee at Brussels.  More beautiful, and, indeed, quite unusually poetical for Rubens, is the small Assumption in the Queen’s Gallery, a finished sketch for the larger picture.  The majestic Virgin, arrayed in white and blue drapery, rises with outstretched arms, surrounded by a choir of angels; below, the apostles and the women either follow with upward gaze the soaring ecstatic figure, or look with surprise at the flowers which spring within the empty tomb.