The Virgin of the Assumption with St Thomas Receiving the Girdle
by BULGARINI, Bartolommeo, Tempera on panel, 205 x 112 cm
This painting was probably the centre of an altarpiece for the principal altar in the newly founded chapel of the relics (one of the a piece of the Virgin’s girdle which she was alleged to have dropped to the apostle Thomas at the moment of her assumption into heaven) within the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala. The Virgin, surrounded by a mandorla of red-faced cherubim and accompanied by music-making angels, may have been framed by side panels depicting St Anthony Abbot and St John the Evangelist.