The Feast of the Dormition, celebrated on August 15, is the last of the Twelve Great Feasts in the church calendar/liturgical year. It commemorates Mary's death and the mystery of her resurrection. The word “dormition” means “falling asleep,” a phrase still used today to describe death.

The complexity of the Dormition story is shown in the many scenes of this icon. The mother of God lies on her funeral bier at the center. She is surrounded by mourners, including bishops in omophorions with dark crosses, twelve disciples, and several women. Her Son stands above in a mandorla surrounded by the night sky; He holds his mother’s soul swaddled as a baby.

A dramatic scene takes place at the bottom of the bier, shown in miniature to diminish its importance as compared to the rest of the icon. A Jewish man named Jephonias attempts to overturn the funeral bier and is attacked by the Archangel Michael who cuts off his hands. Jephonias repented and was said to be fully healed by the Mother of God.  This story dates to the 5th century, which was a time of great tensions between the Christian and Jewish populations, which perhaps suggests that Anti-Semitism was prevalent in the development of medieval Church doctrine.

In the sky above, two independent events happen. In the center, the Mother of God sits upon a throne to show that she is assumed into heaven. Angels peek out from an arc of clouds directly above this.  To each side, the disciples are riding clouds to or from their places of mission. They had traveled far and wide to spread Christianity but were said to have been brought back to Mary’s side as she died.

In the West, Mary's death is viewed differently. Protestants take for granted that Mary died, but they do not believe that she was taken into heaven bodily as Jesus was. For Roman Catholics, a papal declaration in 1950 declared that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven, though whether she died or not was left open to debate. Thus the Roman Catholic emphasis is on Mary's bodily assumption, with little or no emphasis on her death.