Lunette of the east wall in Niccoline Chapel

This is one wall of a small private chapel deep in the Vatican palace, painted for Pope Nicholas V, who took office in 1447. He was the pope who effectively founded the Vatican Library and set about rebuilding a shabby, half-empty Rome into a capital worthy of the returned papacy. For his own chapel he brought in Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar famous for his devoutness. Across the walls Angelico laid out the lives of two early Roman deacons martyred for the faith, Stephen and Lawrence, in glowing blues and gold, with careful classical buildings behind the figures. The curved panel high on the wall, the lunette, belongs to that upper band of the story. Angelico worked here in the late 1440s with a young assistant, Benozzo Gozzoli.