Death of the Virgin
Master of Heiligenkreuz (Austrian)
c. 1400
- Medium
- tempera and oil with gold on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 66 x 53.3 cm (26 x 21 in.); Framed: 74 x 61.5 x 4.5 cm (29 1/8 x 24 3/16 x 1 3/4 in.); Unframed: 71 x 54 cm (27 15/16 x 21 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Austria, possibly Bohemia, early 15th Century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Medieval Art
- Credit line
- Gift of the Friends of The Cleveland Museum of Art in memory of John Long Severance
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Christ’s apostles visit the Virgin upon her deathbed. Saint Peter, wearing white robes and the papal tiara, performs funerary rites, reciting prayers and sprinkling holy water on the Virgin’s body. Above, angels engraved upon the golden background celebrate the assumption of the Virgin heavenward. Once joined to another panel titled The Death of Saint Clare (National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), this double representation of saintly deaths may have been used in funerary services in the convent of Clarissan nuns for which it was made.
