The Assumption of the Virgin 1751 Francesco de Mura Italian The Neapolitan late-Baroque master Francesco de Mura executed three major ceiling paintings representing the Assumption of the Virgin, all of them strongly influenced by the example of his great master Francesco Solimena (1656-1747). The first of these was an Assumption painted about 1727 on the vault of the sacristy of the Annunziata in Airola, near Benevento for which an oil sketch is in the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples. In 1737 De Mura signed and dated a ceiling painting on canvas destined for a church in Gallipoli and now in the episcopal palace of that city. Domenica Pasculli Ferrara cites three oil sketches for the Gallipoli Assumption. In 1986 Lawrence Turčic identified a pen and wash drawing by De Mura in the Louvre as a study for the Gallipoli picture; the Louvre drawing had been classified as a work of the studio of Francesco Solimena (Inv. 9787-1, see Monbeig Goguel and Vitzthum 1967, no. 83).The most ambiti