Madonna and Child Enthroned and Twelve Angels

Florence in the 1420s was working out how to put space on a flat panel. Brunelleschi's dome was rising over the cathedral, Masaccio had just died at 26 having shown painters what perspective could do, and Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar at San Domenico in Fiesole, still working the old luxurious way in tempera and gold. The canopy above the Madonna's throne is where the new geometry turns up: it is built to recede, inside an otherwise entirely traditional gold-ground picture. The twelve angels around her are each given a different pose. The Stadel in Frankfurt has owned the panel since 1831. It stands only about 37 centimetres high, made to be looked at closely by one person at a time, for private prayer and for the pleasure of a collector who knew good painting.