the apostles bear her on their
shoulders over rocky ground, and appear to be descending into the
Valley of Jehoshaphat: underneath are these lines:--

"Portan gli uomini santi in su le spalle
Al Sepolcro il corpo di Maria
Di Josaphat nella famosa valle."

There is another picture of this subject by Ludovico Caracci, at
Parma.

* * * * *

THE ENTOMBMENT. In the early pictures, there is little distinction
between this subject and the Death of the Virgin. If the figure
of Christ stand over the recumbent form, holding in his arms the
emancipated soul, then it is the _Transito_--the death or sleep; but
when a sarcophagus is in the centre of the picture, and the body
lies extended above it on a sort of sheet or pall held by angels or
apostles, it may be determined that it is the Entombment of the Virgin
after her death. In a small and very beautiful picture by Angelico, we
have distinctly this representation.[1] She lies, like one asleep, on
a white pall, held reverently by the mourners. They prepare to lay her
in a marble sarcophagus. St. John, bearing the starry palm, appears
to address a man in a doctor's cap and gown, evidently intended for
Dionysius the Areopagite. Above, in the sky, the soul of the Virgin,
surrounded by most graceful angels, is received into heaven. This
group is distinguished from the group below, by being painted in a
dreamy bluish tint, like solidified light, or like a vision.

[Footnote 1: This picture, now in the possession of W. Fuller
Maitland, Esq., was exhibited in the British Institution in the summer
of 1852. It is engraved in the Etruria Pittrice.]

* * * * *

THE ASSUMPTION. The old painters distinguish between the Assumption
of the soul and the Assumption of the body of the Virgin. In the first
instance, at the moment the soul is separated from the body, Christ
receives it into his keeping, standing in person either beside her
death-bed or above it. But in the Assumption properly so called, we
have the moment wherein the soul of the Virgin is reunited to her
body, which, at the command of Christ, rises up from the tomb. Of all
the themes of sacred art there is not one more complete and beautiful
than this, in what it represents, and in what it suggests. Earth and
its sorrows, death and the grave, are left below; and the pure spirit
of the Mother again clothed in its unspotted tabernacle, surrounded
by angelic ha