The Last Judgment

Fra Angelico's Last Judgment, painted around 1431 for the Museum of San Marco, presents the cosmic drama of salvation and damnation with his characteristic combination of theological clarity and visual beauty. The painting divides into zones of paradise and hell with Christ in Judgment at the summit. 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 composition is organized in clear hierarchical zones from heaven to hell, with Fra Angelico's luminous garden of paradise contrasting dramatically with the dark, flame-lit inferno, the whole unified by his masterful color orchestration.