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The feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God is the most important feast of the Virgin in the Eastern Church, in spite of the fact that it has no basis in the gospels. The feast and its associated images had their sources in apocryphal stories and homilies, among which a sermon on the death of the Mother of God by Archbishop John of Thessaloniki (610-649) had the greatest influence on the iconography
The emphasis in the depiction of this event is on the reception of her soul into heaven. Following the end of the Iconoclastic periods, the 10th and 11th centuries witnessed a compositional scheme that was largely retained and later only slightly altered or enriched by the addition of further scenes.
The body of the Mother of God is lying stretched out on a bed parallel to the plane of the picture, her legs to the right, as is usual, and her arms crossed over her breast. The apostles, miraculously gathered by angels to the death-bed of the Mother of God from the locations of their respective missions, stand in two groups around the head and foot of the bed. In the centre, behind the bed, we see Christ in a bluish mandorla crowned by a cherub. He is about to entrust to an angel the soul of his mother, represented as a haloed infant in swaddling clothes, which he is holding on his arm.
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