Riflessioni intorno a una Dormitio Virginis ad Adria. L’affermazione della terracotta dipinta nell’arredo liturgico del Polesine alla fine del Medioevo

The church of Santa Maria Assunta in Adria, known as “Tomba”, houses a terracotta Dormitio Virginis attributed to the so-called “Maestro del sepolcro Fava” and dated between 1440 and 1445. This essay sheds new light on the sculpture by reconstructing its original patronage and context, focusing on its liturgical function. Through a material and iconographical approach, combined with documentary evidence, I argue that it was the central part of a larger altarpiece originally located on the church’s main altar. In the same years, the sculptor Michele da Firenze executed another large terracotta altarpiece for the main altar of Adria Cathedral, of which the Tomba was subsidiary. Therefore, the patronage choices made by the bishops of that period, who promoted the renovation of the two sacred buildings and adorned them with these altarpieces, reveal the leading role played by the clay technique in Polesine during the fifteenth century.