The Death of The Virgin by Michelangelo Caravaggio, created during the years of 1601 and 1606, was one of the one of the most rejected of Caravaggio’s paintings. The composition of the painting directs the viewer’s eye directly toward the lifeless body in a setting of bleak poverty. The subjects standing around the body, with their solemn faces and grave stances, along with the stark contrast between light and dark, enhance the grieving atmosphere, making the painting one of the greatest examples of humanism during the Renaissance.
Caravaggio was commissioned by Laerzio Cherubini, a distinguished criminal lawyer and legal historian, to paint for a newly constructed altar in the church of Santa Maria della Scala, in Rome. Cherubini requested a painting showing the death, or transit as stated in Caravaggio’s contract, of the Virgin. (Langdon, 1999) While ‘transit’ suggests a passage between earth and heaven, Caravaggio paints the Virgin’s death devoid of all that is holy.…show more content… Painting the Virgin as dead, is the ultimate suggestion of humanity – as only humans can die, the divine live on spiritually. Despite the fantastical anecdotes in the Golden Legend of angels ascending, along with Christ himself, guiding the Virgin Mary to Heaven, Caravaggio eradicates these tales and focuses solely on the humanisation of her and the grief her death brought about. It is the most humanly natural reaction to grieve in the time of a loved one’s death. “The weight of grief here is measured by the sense of a real death, it’s a response not to immortality, but to mortality. And that’s reason enough to mourn.” (Simon Schama's Power of Art, 2006) Caravaggio presents these humanistic traits through his style of