A possible missing link in the evolution of the World

In last year's very long post "The Throne and the World," I attempted to trace the evolution of the final trump of the Tarot de Marseille -- from the biblical visions of Ezekiel and John, through the "Maiestas Domini" depictions of Christ, to the dancing woman of the Tarot. One of the most mysterious transitions in this development is from the male figures of God and Christ to the female dancer of the Tarot, and I speculated that the beardless, and thus sexually ambiguous, Christ of the Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse (later echoed by Caravaggio in his Supper at Emmaus) may have played a important role.

Today a routine scan of the shelves of the small English-language section of the local used bookstore turned up an unexpected find: an unabridged republication of Joseph Halfpenny's 1795 book Gothic Ornament: Architectural Motifs from York Cathedral, which I of course snapped up without hesitation, as one never knows when such things might come in handy. Flipping through it at home later this evening, I was intrigued to discover this:

This is clearly a close cousin of the Maiestas Domini, with a central figure in an almond-shaped nimbus (mandorla), surrounded by four angelic beings -- humanoid angels in this case, rather than the Four Living Creatures of the Apocalypse. But unlike a Maiestas Domini -- and like the Tarot -- it shows an unambiguously female central figure, and one who is standing rather than seated on a throne. Halfpenny says that its subject is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

York Minster is of course a bit too far from Marseille for direct influence on the Tarot to be plausible, but it's given me a lead to follow. If, as seems likely, similar portrayals of the Assumption can be found in France or Italy, their relevance to the Tarot can be taken for granted.