The apostles grieve around the body of Mary, who lies with swollen feet and a red dress in a bare room. Caravaggio painted it in Rome around 1605 for a church, which rejected it.

The clergy found it shockingly undignified: a real dead woman, not a serene saint. Rubens, then working in Italy, advised the Duke of Mantua to buy it, and it later entered the French royal collection.