Ordination of St Laurence

Fra Angelico's Ordination of Saint Lawrence in the Niccoline Chapel, painted around 1447, depicts Pope Sixtus II conferring the diaconate on the young Lawrence. The scene established the institutional authority theme that runs through the chapel's program, connecting the historical papacy to the contemporary pontificate of Nicholas V. 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 ordination ceremony is set within a barrel-vaulted Roman interior rendered in one-point perspective, with the celebrants arranged in a symmetrical composition that emphasizes the formality of the liturgical ritual.