The Crucifixion

Fra Angelico's Crucifixion at the Metropolitan Museum, painted around 1420, presents the Calvary scene with the tender devotional quality that made the Dominican friar the most beloved painter of sacred subjects in early Renaissance Florence. The painting's intimate scale suggests it was created for private meditation. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The Crucifixion is rendered with Fra Angelico's characteristic luminous palette and gentle modeling, the minimal composition focusing attention on Christ's sacrifice with the spare clarity appropriate to contemplative devotional art.