Virgin of the Assumption
by FONTANA, Annibale, Marble
In the 1580s, Fontana worked in the area of the presbytery of the church. Of his hand are the marble Assumption on the altar of the miraculous Madonna, the statue of St. John the Evangelist, placed opposite, and the two silver reliefs with the Birth of Mary and the Dormitio Virginis for the altar frontal.
In his last work, the Virgin of the Assumption, completed in 1586, a year before his death, Fontana achieved an image of transitory ecstasy which looks forward to the sculptures of Bernini.
The two angels above the Virgin are later additions by Giulio Cesare Procaccini.