Scripture · John 20:17
Song of Solomon 6:10
The Assumption of the Virgin
Who is this who shines like the dawn, as fair as the moon, as bright as the sun, as majestic as the stars in procession?
Mary rises on a bank of clouds above the apostles, whose lifted arms carry the movement upward through Titian’s tall altarpiece.
About the artwork
The painting makes ascent legible across a great vertical distance. The apostles remain below, reaching and looking upward, while Mary occupies the cloudborne middle of the composition. Their gestures link the earthly gathering to the heavenly space above, allowing the eye to travel through the entire image.
Titian painted the altarpiece in 1516–1518 for the high altar of the Frari Basilica in Venice. At nearly seven meters tall, its scale belongs to the church’s architecture and to viewing from a distance. The subject expresses the Catholic belief that Mary was taken into heaven, body and soul, at the end of her earthly life.
Featured in: The Mysteries of the Rosary in Art: 20 Paintings, One for Each Mystery
Featured in: The Life of the Virgin Mary in Paintings
What does Song of Solomon 6:10 mean?
Song of Solomon 6:10 describes a woman through images of dawn, moon, sun and ordered ranks. Within the poem, this is language of admiration for the beloved. It does not narrate Mary’s Assumption or identify its woman as Mary.
The verse accompanies this painting through a later Marian reading of the poem’s luminous imagery. The Assumption belongs to Christian tradition and was defined as Catholic dogma in 1950; it is not an event narrated in the Bible. The pairing therefore joins a traditional subject to poetic language that Christians have applied to Mary, while preserving the text’s original setting.
The poem’s images of radiance accompany a traditional Marian subject; the verse itself does not describe the Assumption.
Sources
The Mysteries of the Rosary in Art: 20 Paintings, One for Each Mystery. Artwork reading adapted from this guide.
Song of Solomon 6 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Song of Solomon 6:10.
Also from Song of Solomon:The Mystic FlowerThe Artist’s Garden at Giverny