Deposition of Christ

Christ's body is lowered from the cross into the arms of his mourners, the scene spread across a wide, sunlit landscape with a real Tuscan town behind - the Deposition described in the Gospels (John 19:38-42). Fra Angelico inherited the towering Gothic gabled frame, begun years earlier by the painter Lorenzo Monaco, and filled it with an entirely modern picture: where an older artist would have used a flat gold ground, he opens deep, airy space and bathes the figures in clear light. The contrast of old frame and new painting captures the very moment Florence crossed from the Gothic world into the Renaissance.