The Lamentation over St Francis

Fra Angelico's Lamentation over Saint Francis at the Gemaldegalerie Berlin, painted around 1429, depicts the mourning of the Franciscan brothers over their founder's body. Though a Dominican, Fra Angelico brought his characteristic spiritual tenderness to this Franciscan subject, reflecting the fraternal relationship between the two great mendicant orders. Fra Angelico's treatments of Christ's Passion carry the distinctive weight of a man for whom painting was inseparable from prayer. The Deposition and related subjects allowed him to explore the full range of grief — the controlled sorrow of the saints, the collapsed anguish of the Virgin — within a compositional framework of extraordinary beauty.

The lamentation scene is composed with characteristic restraint and luminous color, the grieving friars arranged around the body of Francis in a composition that echoes traditional Lamentation over Christ imagery.