The Assumption of the Virgin

After his Roman sojourn of 1661/62, Pierre Puget resided in Genoa until 1668. The artist, who was also active as a painter and architect, took on a number of important commissions there. It was during this Genoese period that Charles II Gonzaga commissioned the Berlin marble relief of the Assumption of the Virgin. Celebrated in documents and in contemporary literature as a work of exceptional beauty, the relief was probably originally on an altar in a chapel in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. It was a frequently depicted subject, but Puget gave it his own highly individual expression, both formally and iconographically. In his vision of the Assumption, the Madonna, borne aloft over an open sarcophagus by clouds and angels, is gazing raptly and full of baroque pathos up to where her son awaits her. Angels carrying her insignia, the sceptre and coronet, are hastening ahead of her.