El Greco's Assumption Of The Virgin

El Greco’s Assumption of the Virgin is a masterful and imposing piece of art, spanning almost 7 feet in width and standing over 13 feet tall. The work was commissioned by the church of the Cistercian convent of Santo Domingo in Toledo to be the central panel of the church’s high altar, thus it should be imagined in its original form not as a single piece but one flanked by other religious artwork and alters including paintings of individual saints and the trinity. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary ascending into heaven while balancing on a crescent moon, a symbol of her purity. The work is characterized into two distinct parts and moods; the first is manifested in the earthly section of the painting, in which apostles gather around the Virgin’s
This particular theme is expressed through the elongated and dramatically twisted figures which surround the Virgin Mary, both on Earth and in the Heavens, and the elaborate drapery that covers their respective bodies. The artist works brilliantly with the lighting and colors he implements in his work, choosing to cover the Virgin Mary in a royal and regal blue and using lines and foreshortening to portray the angels as if they are suspended mid-space in Heaven. The Assumption of the Virgin embodies several other aspects of the High Renaissance previously seen in other works as well, such as the illustration of a principally religious theme by giving the participants in the painting a humanistic approach, especially in terms of physicality. This apocryphal tale told by Saint John, who is present in the painting holding his book, does not seem to lose any of its charged emotion and religiosity in this visual depiction as the Spanish maestro’s work transcends the limits of his chosen medium to convey, in a highly elegant manner, its religious aspects and the sentiment afforded by