In this high-relief sculpture, the apostles gather around the Virgin’s deathbed, conducting various funerary rituals as Mary peacefully passes. Saint Peter, holding a book, officiates. Next to him, an apostle sprinkles holy water. At the foot of the bed, another apostle perfumes the air with incense. Saint Thomas is absent from the Virgin’s bedside; instead, he appears in the portal on the right, where an angel miraculously delivers the Virgin’s girdle as tangible proof of her Assumption into Heaven. The entire scene occurs in a fifteenth-century bedroom decorated with late Gothic furniture. Showing Mary in a familiar interior encouraged contemporary worshippers to empathetically identify with the Virgin, devoutly experiencing her emotions as their own.

This sculpture was once the central scene of a triptych that likely served as an altarpiece. The wings (now at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe) depict the Birth of the Virgin and the Nativity of Christ. The exterior is painted with an Annunciation scene. The sculpture appears to have been cut along its top edge, where it may have once had a depiction of Christ receiving the Virgin’s soul. While the original polychromy of the wings survives, the sculpture now at The Cloisters has been stripped of any paint. This change probably occurred in the nineteenth century, when bare wood sculptures were perceived as more authentic and thus more lucrative on the art market. Only traces of gesso, or the base layer, remain.