Man of Sorrows

Fra Angelico's Man of Sorrows, painted around 1443 for the Museum of San Marco, depicts Christ displaying his wounds in the devotional image type designed to stimulate meditation on the Passion. This half-length format, derived from Byzantine models, was widely used in Italian devotional practice for private and monastic contemplation. 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 iconic image reduces the subject to its devotional essentials, with Christ's wounded body rendered in Fra Angelico's luminous flesh tones against a plain background that focuses attention on the theological content of suffering and redemption.