Who painted the Assumption of the Virgin?

The Assumption of the Virgin is a large oil painting by Italian Renaissance artist Titian, executed in 1516–18. It is now located on the high altar in the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. It is the largest altarpiece in the city.

Tiziano Vecellio, who lived around 1488–1576, and well known as Titian, has been called one of (if not) the greatest artist of the Renaissance period. Titian contributed to all of the major areas of Renaissance art, painting, church altarpieces, etc... He went on to paint several other influential altarpieces, above all the Death of Saint Peter Martyr for the the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul, at Rome.

During his career in the 16th-century Venice, he was one of the first painters to have a mainly international clientele. Also, in his long life, he experimented with many different styles of painting. Thus, he was well known for helping artists to paint works of art with less descriptive representations of reality.

In the 1560s and early 1570s, when Titian was extremely old, he pushed his art to the edge of abstraction. Accordingly his later style has been defined as ‘magic impressionism’. All of this is well represented by two of his latest works, The Death of Actaeon at the National Gallery, and the ‘Pietà’, now in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

The ‘Pietà’ was originally destined for Titian's tomb in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, where Titian was buried after dying of the plague in August 1576.