Tabernacle: Assumption of the Virgin
by ORCAGNA, Marble, lapis lazuli, gold and glass inlay
On the back of the tabernacle, built to house Bernardo Daddi’s repainting of a lost image of the Virgin and Child, is the large relief “Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin.” The two scenes, treated as one, are separated by the horizontal band of the tomb.
The picture shows the upper part of the relief in which the Virgin levitates within a mandorla indicating spirituality and bestows her girdle on the kneeling St Thomas.