NARRATOR: This ivory panel shows the Virgin Mary lying dead on her funeral bier. Christ has descended from heaven, and the apostles have returned from preaching to be present at her death. Christ lifts her soul—which looks like a baby—upward to a group of angels, who will carry her to heaven.

HELEN EVANS: You are looking at an image that is small enough that we assume it was meant to be held, looked at by an individual as an act of personal devotion, someone thinking about the role of the Virgin….

NARRATOR: Helen Evans is a curator specializing in Byzantine art at The Metropolitan Museum:

HELEN EVANS: And for a tradition that we often think of as being very flat and very very stylized, these ivories are incredibly realistic in the details of the emotions of the apostles that are grouped above and beside her… If you will look carefully, you can see that the angels and the Christ are almost fully carved from behind, so that they are released from the actual ivory itself, and are close to being three-dimensional figures. It is a marvelously animated work.