The Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, from: The Life of the Virgin

The composition of this print is closely related the central panel of the Heller Altarpiece, which was completed in 1509 and was later dispersed. The surviving panels are today at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. Dürer seems to have developed the composition for the painting in a series of chiaroscuro drawings on colored paper heightened with white (W. 448-465), which also formed the stylistic basis for the woodcuts for the Life of the Virgin of 1510. Another preparatory drawing relating directly to this woodcut, executed in plain pen and ink, is at the Albertina in Vienna (W. 471).