Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Mary Catholic Church

City: Royal Oak

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Queen Assumed Into Heaven

Brief Description of Subject: This clerestory window is one of 17 windows illuminating titles for the Virgin Mary found in the Litany of Loreto. The title pictured here is "Queen Assumed Into Heaven."

Although a traditional belief since early Christianity, the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven became dogma in 1950 by proclamation of Pope Pius XII. Also a traditional belief is that upon her assumption into heaven, she was crowned the Queen of Heaven, thus Pope Pius XII added the title "Queen Assumed Into Heaven" to the Litany of Loreto.

Pictured in this window is a crown placed on a large "M." This combination of a crown and "M" is a symbol for Mary as "Queen of Heaven." As ``Queen of Heaven" is not a title used in the Litany, this is being used to refer to Mary's assumption into heaven.

The painting titled "Assumption of the Virgin" attributed to the Studio of Peter Paul Rubens c.1620, shows the association of the crowning of Mary in heaven with the Assumption.

Height: 10'

Width: 4'

The MSGC is a constantly evolving database. Not all the data that has been collected by volunteers has been sorted and entered. Not every building has been completely documented.

All images in the Index are either born-digital photographs of windows or buildings or are scans of slides, prints, or other published sources. These images have been provided by volunteers and the quality of the material varies widely.

If you have any questions, additions or corrections, or think you can provide better images and are willing to share them, please contact donald20@msu.edu