The first is purely ideal and devotional; it is simply the expression of a dogma of faith, "_Assumpta est Maria Virgo in Coelum_." The figure of the Virgin is seen within an almond-shaped aureole (the mandorla), not unfrequently crowned as well as veiled, her hands joined, her white robe falling round her feet (for in all the early pictures the dress of the Virgin is white, often spangled with stars), and thus she seems to cleave the air upwards, while adoring angels surround the glory of light within which she is enshrined. Such are the figures which are placed in sculpture over the portals of the churches dedicated to her, as at Florence.[1] She is not always standing and upright, but seated on a throne, placed within an aureole of light, and borne by angels, as over the door of the Campo Santo at Pisa. I am not sure that such figures are properly styled the Assumption; they rather exhibit in an ideal form the glorification of the Virgin, another version of the same idea expressed in the _Incoronata_. She is here _Varia Virgo Assumpta_, or, in Italian, _L'Assunta_; she has taken upon her the glory of immortality, though not yet crowned. [Footnote 1: The "Santa Maria del Fiore,"--the Duomo.] But when the Assumption is presented to us as the final scene of her life, and expresses, as it were, a progressive action--when she has left the empty tomb, and the wondering, weeping apostles on the earth below, and rises "like the morning" ("_quasi aurora surgens_") from the night of the grave,--then we have the Assumption of the Virgin in its dramatic and historical form, the final act and consummation of her visible and earthly life. As the Church had never settled in what manner she was translated into heaven, only pronouncing it heresy to doubt the fact itself, the field was in great measure left open to the artists. The tomb below, the figure of the Virgin floating in mid-air, and the opening heavens above, such is the general conception fixed by the traditions of art; but to give some idea of the manner in which this has been varied, I shall describe a few examples. 1. Giunta Pisano, 1230. (Assisi, S. Franceso.) Christ and the Virgin ascend together in a seated attitude upborne by clouds and surrounded by angels; his arm is round her. The empty tomb, with the apostles and others, below. The idea is here taken from the Canticles (ch. viii.), "Who is this that ariseth from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved?"