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Among the various choir books that Don Silvestro illuminated for his monastery, Santa Maria degli Angeli, one (Cod. Cor. 2, now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence) clearly stands out for its high artistic quality. As were most of the Santa Maria degli Angeli choir books which entered the Biblioteca Laurenziana, it was mutilated in the Napoleonic period. Twenty pages - many of them the most important and most beautiful - were cut from this gradual and found their way into various collections. There are thirty-eight present and missing illuminations in the codex on which a reconstruction can be based.
The miniature from folio 142 depicts the Death and Assumption of the Virgin. It introduces the liturgy for the feast of the Assumption (August 15). The monumentally rendered narration of the Virgin Mary's death visualizes three crucial moments in a single composition: her entombment, the passing of her soul to Christ, and her assumption to the heavenly realm. A great multitude of apostles and angels - appropriate to the illumination's provenance from a choir book made for the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli - and Christ have gathered around the Virgins's sarcophagus.
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