Madonna of the Pomegranate

When Fra Angelico set down this small panel around 1426, he was a Dominican friar at San Domenico in Fiesole, on the hill above Florence, and the city below was in the middle of something new. Masaccio had lately finished an altarpiece for the church of Sant'Ambrogio, in 1423 and 1424, and its solid, weighted figures were changing what painters thought a body could look like. You can feel Angelico taking that in. The Virgin has real presence, while the gold ground behind her belongs to an older way of painting he hasn't quite left. The fruit in her hand is a pomegranate, whose split red seeds were read as a sign of Christ's coming death and resurrection. This panel stayed in private hands longer than almost any of his major works. The Prado acquired it only in 2016, from the ducal collection of Alba.