DANIELE da Volterra
(b. 1509, Volterra, d. 1566, Roma)

The Assumption of the Virgin

c. 1555
Fresco
Santissima Trinità dei Monti, Rome

Daniele da Volterra and his workshop frescoed a tomb chapel for Lucrezia della Rovere in the Roman church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti. The Marian program of the decoration is tailored to the woman who commissioned it; the worries, plights, joys, achievements, and heavenly rewards of women are depicted. Each of the three walls is filled from floor to cornice with a single large narrative scene. On the side walls one finds painted balustrades below, from which steps seem to lead up out of the chapel to the stage on which the story takes place. The left balustrade, in front of the terrible scene of the Massacre of the Innocents, is closed; the one on the right, before the exemplary Presentation of the Virgin, is open. The chapel seems to have been transformed into a loggia, which on the altar wall continues into the depth of the painting. The real chapel is expanded into a fictive one, in which the apostles are standing around Mary's grave, and the Mother of God floats away to the Assumption amid a wreath of angels. In the foreground two apostles seem to be leaning out of the painting onto the actual altar of the chapel.