The Entombment of Christ
Fra Angelico·c. 1450
Historical Context
Fra Angelico's Entombment of Christ represents the Dominican friar-painter working at the intersection of late Gothic tenderness and early Renaissance spatial clarity. Angelico's career spanned the decisive decades of Florentine artistic revolution, and he absorbed Brunelleschi's perspective and Masaccio's monumental figure style while retaining the luminous gold and jewel-bright color of the International Gothic tradition. His devotional paintings were prized for their spiritual quality—Vasari claimed that Angelico never painted a Crucifixion without tears—and they served the meditation practices of Dominican convents across Tuscany. This Entombment, with its carefully arranged grieving figures and classical architectural setting, demonstrates how Angelico reconciled new Renaissance form with enduring spiritual function.
Technical Analysis
Executed in tempera on poplar panel, the painting demonstrates Fra Angelico's luminous color harmonies and precise, delicate brushwork. The figures are arranged in a carefully balanced composition with soft, ethereal light that gives the scene an otherworldly quality.
Provenance
Possibly the Medici family, Florence, by 1492.[1] (Stefano Bardini [1836-1922], Florence). (Professor Luigi Grassi [1858-1937], Florence); purchased January 1923 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York).[2] Henry Goldman [1857-1937], New York, by 1924.[3] (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York); sold March 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] See Eugene Müntz, _Les Collections des Médicis au XVe siècle_, Paris, 1888: 64; among the belongings in Lorenzo de' Medici's chamber is "una tavoletta dipintovi Nostro Signore morto chon molti santi che lo portano al sepolcro, di mano di fra Giovanni" ("a little panel with painted on it Our dead Lord with many saints who are carrying him to the sepulchre, from the hand of Fra Giovanni"). Although the description is by no means precise, the relative rarity of the subject strongly suggests identification with NGA 1939.1.260. [2] The date of passage of the work to Stefano Bardini is not known (see Fiorenza Scalia and Cristina De Benedictis, _Il Museo Bardini à Florence_, Milan, 1984: 125). The provenance from the Bardini and Grassi collections is indicated by Frida Schottmüller, _Fra Angelico da Fiesole. Des Meisters Gemälde_, Berlin and Leipzig, 1924: no. 180, 266. Duveen Brothers Records list the painting as "ex Bardini" and itemize a commission paid to "Tolentino" (X Book, Reel 422, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles). [3] The panel was shipped to New York in the spring of 1923, and exhibited there in 1924 as part of the Goldman collection. A letter from Bernard Berenson to Henry Goldman, dated 27 February 1924 (copy in NGA curatorial files), in which the scholar congratulates the collector on the acquisition of "that beautiful Fra Angelico," would indicate the panel was a recent addition. It was likely purchased from Duveen Brothers. [4] The Duveen Brothers letter confirming the sale of twenty-four paintings, including NGA 1939.1.260, is dated 9 March 1937; provenance is given as "Henry Goldman Collection" (copy in NGA curatorial files; Box 474, Folder 5, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2163.
