An unusual Florentine painting of The Assumption

Looking for images of the Assumption I came upon a Florentine work of 1475-6 by Francisco Botticini (1446-98). It is now in the National Gallery in London, which acquired it in 1882.

Commissioned by Matteo Palmieri, who died in 1477, for a now demolished church in the city of Florence, it seems to illustrate or complement some of Palmieri’s distinctly heterodox ideas about Salvation history for the individual. Those appear to include the possibility of mortals having three lives in which to attain eternal bliss. Palmieri insisted that his writings were not to be published during his lifetime. 

Wikipedia has a short, illustrated, article about the painting at Assumption of the Virgin (Botticini)

However for further information it is illustrated and discussed in much more detail in an online article from Art UK by Martin Kemp which can be seen here

Martin Kemp’s discussion of the work and of Palmieri illustrates something of the artistic inventiveness in painting and religious drama in fifteenth century Florence and of the variety and vitality of the intellectual climate of the city. Heterodoxy was, it would seem, discretely respectable. 

Makes you begin to wonder if Savanarola was altogether a bad thing ….