The Assumption of the Virgin

This study for the Assumption of the Virgin, sharply rendered with ink and washes, records an idea for one of Reni’s most successful compositions. During the mid-1620s, distancing himself from the traditional representation of the subject, the artist developed his distinctive iconography for the Assumption by isolating the Virgin on clouds supported by angels. Established around 1627 for the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception in the church of San Biagio in Forlì, the formula was repeated with variations in other paintings such as the altarpieces now in Castelfranco Emilia and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 59.32), also datable to 1527 (see H. Hibbard, 'Guido Reni’s Painting of the Immaculate Conception', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XXVIII, no. 1, 1969, pp. 18-32).

While the typology of the Madonna closely resembles Reni’s later variation on the subject, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (ca. 1631-40, see R.E. Spear, The 'Divine' Guido, New Haven, 1997, p. 144, ill.), the style of this drawing indicates an earlier date in the 1620s.