TITIAN's FRARI ASSUMPTION

TITIAN'S FRARI ASSUMPTION 

The main altarpiece for the Franciscan Church in Venice, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, was painted by Titian between 1515 and 1518, much before the Pesaro Altarpiece painted by him for the family altar on the left side of the nave and even further before the Pieta he painted in the last year of his life, 1576, a painting intended for his tomb on the opposite side of the church from the Pesaro but within
the same nave. 
         The Assumption of the Virgin, the rising of Mary up into heaven at her death, is the largest altarpiece in the church dedicated to her.
The two other paintings by Titian in the church point towards this main altar painting with diagonal
arrangements of the figures, and both of his other paintings include Mary as part of the subject for these private altars in the nave.

 

The Assumption is found at Number 12 on the plan, at the end of the apse, and it becomes the viewer's focus in entering the church from the front.

The rounded triumphal arch frame in which it stands provides a suitable ending to the walk through a church meant as a celebration of Mary. Titian has painted Mary's triumph here.  

She is leaving the earthly world on a white cloud of winged putti and she raises both her hands in

an orant gesture as she looks up to God the Father who looks down on her and welcomes her into

heaven:

She looks somewhat apprehensive about leaving what she knows for the unknown but perhaps is reassured by the opening arms of God.

 What Titian does is take the vast space of the canvas and organize it into three layers:

1) the earthly realm with blue sky and white clouds, with the apostles who witnessed Mary's death
and assumption gathered in groups standing and looking up at her figure.

2) the middle section of white cloud with winged putti rejoicing as the red-dressed figure of Mary ascends from the earth to heaven surrounded by love, literally:

3) the top section of the golden sky of heaven with God the Father accompanied by angels and seraphim:

Once the artist has set up these three zones he must find a way to connect them together and to imply the movement upward of the Virgin. He does this magnificently using the color red and arms and legs to visually elide the groups into one whole.
 

 

The apostle dressed in red at the bottom has his back to the viewer and reaches his arms up towards

the Virgin; this gesture allows the viewer to take his place as his/her own and it moves the viewer's

eye up towards the middle section, where Mary is also dressed in red; Mary's arms also repeat the

upward gesture toward God, so that the viewer follows the movement of the arms up towards God,

who also has red in his garment. Seen from afar, the red colors in each of the sections allow the eye to

to jump from lower section, closest to the viewer, on earth, to the heavenly realm, in a triangular vision of red. The artist also gives us faces to guide us from the lowest level to the highest:

The face of Thomas, the apostle who was given the Virgin's girdle (the green cloth he holds onto) at

her Assumption, looks up at the figure of Mary, which makes the viewer look upwards, too. He, too, is dressed in red.

Then, Mary looks up toward the old man face of God, so the viewer follows her turned-up face as well.

The red color at the bottom is ample and lush and gradually diminishes towards the top, where it is
swallowed up by the golden glow of heaven.

In my opinion it is likely that Raphael was influenced by Titian's arrangement of earthly and heavenly zones in his great masterpiece in the Vatican Museum, the Transfiguration. Painted between 1516 and 1520, this painting exhibits a lower earthly area where the apostles are gathered to witness the curing of a boy possessed by demons and in the heavenly realm Christ is visited by Elijah and Moses.

The middle zone in this painting is occupied by the three disciples who saw Christ in this vision:
John, James, and Peter. Raphael uses the same arm gestures as Titian to convey movement upward,
but his reds do not accelerate the movement for the viewer, as in Titian's altarpiece:

Both are paintings of visions, though. The Assumption story, meant to eliminate the possibility of death for Mary, is not recounted in the Gospels, but rather comes from the later stories about the Virgin in the legends about saints written down by Jacopo della Voragine in 1289 called The Golden Legend. There he describes the rising of Mary into heaven after she falls asleep (the Dormition of the Virgin.) "And anon the soul came again to the body of Mary, and issued gloriously out of the tomb, and thus was received in the heavenly chamber, and a great company of angels with her."(James Hall, p. 34, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, New York, Harper and Row, 1979.)

          In Titian's version her soul issues gloriously out of the tomb, and is received in heaven with a great company of angels. The transition from earthly life to afterlife for Mary is presented as a gentle

trip on a cloud up into the sky, and the cloud is held up by angels. All of the journey is weightless as

the heaviness of the body is let go and the soul is transported to God. The use of "gloriously" in the

Voragine description reminds us that the name of the church for which this is the main altar is

Santa Maria GLORIOSA dei Frari. Her trip to glory in glory is given cinematic display by Titian,

and every visitor to the church, even now, is caught up in the drama of the event because of his

glorious rendition of it. The viewer is entranced by the color, gold leaf, and movement upward of the sacred figure. In its presence we become like the apostle in front, reaching up to touch the ideal of the sacred.

Titian understood the need for perfect saints for humans to aspire to be. That the apostle doesn't

quite touch the cloud or the heavenly figures is what Browning is suggesting when he has Andrea del Sarto say: "a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?" But Browning was not thinking of a painting by Andrea del Sarto in that poem. He had surely visited the Frari and stood in front of this altarpiece in wonder.