The Assumption of the Virgin,

The Assumption of the Virgin, Bernardo Daddi, 1337–38. Tempera on wood, gold ground. The Met, Robert Lehman Collection (1975.1.58). This panel is the top half of an altarpiece for a chapel in Prato Cathedral, built to house the city's real relic: the Virgin's girdle. In the scene she lowers it to Saint Thomas below as proof her body rose whole – the panel showing his hands catching it is lost. We rebuilt it as a tiara. The mandorla becomes the crown's pierced opening. The angels return in glass, still in their original green and pink. A frog takes the summit – the one animal that changes bodies without dying. A poppy blooms where the Virgin sat: not a relic passed down to a man waiting below, but a small, symbolic dawn of the matriarchy still ahead of us. 🌸 💅 Original Met piece: metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/458998 Inst: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc8y5NMIivZ/?stkn=NHlrcXg3dTlkemJl Video experiments: https://app.flora.ai/join-project/04c3dfff-e5db-4819-afd6-54c7a7bf7725