# The Assumption of the Virgin (The Marquand Altarpiece) > Andrea della Robbia and Workshop - ca. 1485 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/andrea-della-robbia/della-robbia-assumption-marquand-altarpiece-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Andrea della Robbia and Workshop - **Date:** ca. 1485 - **Medium:** Glazed terracotta - **Dimensions:** 118 1/2 x 88 in. (301 x 223.5 cm), assembled from 66 sections - **Object type:** Ceramic - **Period:** Italian Renaissance, Florentine, fifteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 521 - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Andrea della Robbia's Assumption of the Virgin, known as the Marquand Altarpiece, is sixty-six separately fired and glazed sections of terracotta that assemble into a wall-sized Franciscan altarpiece nearly ten feet high. Made around 1485 for the Observant Franciscan convent of Monte Muro above Scarlino in the Tuscan Maremma, it left that convent's care after the house was secularized under the Napoleonic suppressions of 1809, resurfaced in a private Florentine collection by 1852, and was bought by the New York collector and future Metropolitan Museum president Henry G. Marquand in 1882, the year he also became the young Museum's treasurer.For most of its life at the Metropolitan it was catalogued as Workshop of Andrea della Robbia. Research undertaken for the Museum's 2026 exhibition Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met upgraded that to Andrea della Robbia and Workshop, and returned the altarpiece to public view after roughly seventy years in storage, with about half its sections newly conserved and a scanned three-dimensional reconstruction showing how the whole once fit together. The Museum has stated the fact of the reattribution; it has not, in the sources available to this record, published the specific evidence behind it.The gap in the record is honestly kept open rather than smoothed over: forty-three years between a suppressed Tuscan convent and a documented Florentine owner, an unnamed set of four Franciscan saints at the Virgin's tomb, and an unpublished technical or archival basis for a headline reattribution. What is documented is unusually rich for an object of this kind: a named convent, a named suppression, a named dealer, and one of the Metropolitan Museum's own founding-era trustees as the donor who gave it to the public in the first place. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1485-1809** Convent of Monte Muro (Monte di Muro), Scarlino, Tuscany `[documented]` (commission and installation) Made, on the Metropolitan Museum's own attribution, for the high altar of this Observant Franciscan convent south of Florence, rebuilt around 1460. The convent was secularized and alienated as a farmhouse in 1809 under the Napoleonic suppression of religious houses in occupied Tuscany. - **1809-by 1852** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer, or transaction is documented between the convent's 1809 suppression and the altarpiece's appearance in a private Florentine collection by 1852. The general mechanism by which Napoleonic-suppressed convent property entered the Italian art trade is documented; the specific chain of custody for this object in that window is not. - **by 1852-by 1882** Charles de Fournier and his wife, Josephine del Drago, Florence `[documented]` (private ownership) First documented post-convent owners of record, in Florence. - **by 1882-1882** Luigi Barugi, Florence (dealer) `[documented]` (sale) Sold the altarpiece to Henry G. Marquand in 1882. No further detail on Barugi's firm or the sale terms is documented in the sources consulted. - **1882** Henry G. Marquand, New York `[documented]` (purchase and gift) Purchased from Barugi and given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the same year, 1882, while Marquand was a Museum trustee (he became treasurer that year and the Museum's second president in 1889). Not included in the 1903 estate sale of his remaining personal collection, having already left his possession twenty-one years earlier. - **1882-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (accession and display) Accessioned as 82.4. Off public view for approximately seventy years at some point in the twentieth century, for reasons not documented in the sources consulted; returned to view in Gallery 521 in August 2026 as the centerpiece of Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met, with a new attribution to Andrea della Robbia and Workshop. ## Exhibitions - Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2026-2028 ## Open questions - What specific technical, archival, or connoisseurial evidence underlies the 2026 upgrade from Workshop of Andrea della Robbia to Andrea della Robbia and Workshop. The Museum's own materials assert the finding but do not publish the underlying argument in the sources available to this record. - In what year, and for what specific reason (gallery reinstallation, condition, lack of display space, deaccession review), did the altarpiece go into storage. Sources describe only an approximate span of roughly seventy years before the 2026 exhibition. - How did the altarpiece pass from the suppressed convent of Monte Muro, secularized in 1809, into the hands of Charles de Fournier and Josephine del Drago in Florence by 1852. No source consulted documents an owner, dealer, or transaction in that forty-three-year interval. - Which four Franciscan saints are depicted standing at the Virgin's tomb. No source consulted names them. - What price, if any, Marquand paid Luigi Barugi for the altarpiece in 1882, and how that figure would compare to other Italian Renaissance sculpture entering American collections the same year. - Whether the exhibition's two newly reattributed Andrea della Robbia works (per curator Denise Allen) are this altarpiece and one other named object, or two different objects entirely; no source consulted lists both by name in a single place. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 186236 (accession 82.4), fetched directly: title, artist, date, medium, dimensions, credit line, accession number, gallery number, isPublicDomain, and primary/additional image URLs. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection catalogue entry, 'Andrea della Robbia - The Assumption of the Virgin (The Marquand Altarpiece)', object 186236: attribution, dimensions, iconographic description, and provenance (Monte Muro, Fournier/del Drago, Barugi, Marquand). - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Perspectives, 'The Marquand Altarpiece': damage before accession, partial conservation, and the 3D scan reconstruction of the 66-section assembly. - [4] Metropolitan Museum Journal, 'Workshop Practice Revealed by Two Architectural Reliefs by Andrea Della Robbia', vol. 54, on shared piece-molds and assistant retouching in Andrea della Robbia's workshop production. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibition page, 'Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met': dates, gallery number, and scope of the exhibition. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release, 'Exhibition at The Met to Shed New Light on Innovative Works of Florentine Renaissance Sculpture by the Della Robbia Family and Workshop': curators, dimensions, 66 sections, reattribution language, and funding credits. - [7] Galerie Magazine, 'An Andrea della Robbia Masterpiece Is on View at The Met for the First Time in 70 Years' (2026). - [8] Heni, 'The Met's Della Robbia Makes Its Debut' (2026): reattribution language and Hill Art Foundation support. - [9] Ritz Herald, 'Met Exhibition Spotlights Della Robbia Family's Glazed Terracotta Sculptures' (2026): curators, 33 conserved sections, director's quote. - [10] City Life Org, 'Exhibition at The Met to Shed New Light on Innovative Works of Florentine Renaissance Sculpture by the Della Robbia Family and Workshop' (2026): curators, reattribution language, director's quote, funding credits. - [11] We The Italians, 'Rediscovering Della Robbia at The Met' (2026). - [12] Wikipedia (Italian), 'Convento di Santa Maria a Monte di Muro': founding, Fraticelli origin, Observant Franciscan period, 1809 Napoleonic suppression and conversion to a farmhouse, current ruined state. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Bruno Santi (ed.), Grosseto, Massa Marittima e la Maremma (Mondadori, 1999), cited in its bibliography. - [13] Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI), 'I Luoghi del Cuore', entry for Convento di Monte di Muro: same convent history, corroborating the 1809 suppression date. - [14] Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 'Collecting Old Masters for New York: Henry Gurdon Marquand and the Metropolitan Museum of Art' (JHNA 7:2, Summer 2015): Marquand's business career, Met trustee/treasurer/president roles, and the scope and dating of his gifts. - [15] Wikipedia, 'Henry Gurdon Marquand': biography, railroad fortune, Met leadership, residences, death, and 1903 estate sale total. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography or the Metropolitan Museum's own archival Marquand papers finding aid. - [16] Wikipedia, 'Marquand Collection': composition of Marquand's personal collection, the 1889 Old Masters gift, and the 1903 estate sale, including the retable and Alma-Tadema painting results. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the 1903 American Art Association sale catalogue itself. - [17] Wikipedia, 'Andrea della Robbia': biography, training under Luca, workshop succession to his sons, and career span. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a specialist monograph on the della Robbia family. - [18] Sotheby's, 'A Rare Renaissance Masterpiece from the Workshop of Della Robbia': the La Verna Nativity altarpiece of 1479 as a dated benchmark, and the December 2019 sale of a related Workshop of Andrea della Robbia Madonna Adoring the Infant Christ. - [19] Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 'Family Business: Della Robbia's Renaissance Workshop': the tin-lead glaze recipe, its metal-oxide colorants, the servant/Buglioni theft legend, and the argument that the technique derives from Islamic and Hispano-Moresque potters. - [20] Wikimedia Commons, file records and extmetadata for The Assumption of the Virgin MET 11523.jpg, 146872.jpg, 169157.jpg and 169158.jpg: CC0 licensing confirmed for each, donated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access project. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. 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