Ordination of St Laurence

Around 1447 Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar in his forties, was brought to Rome to paint the private chapel of Pope Nicholas the Fifth, deep inside the Vatican. Nicholas was the scholar-pope who effectively founded the Vatican Library and set about rebuilding a Rome left battered and half-empty during the long years the popes had been away. For his chapel walls Angelico told the story of two early Roman martyrs, Stephen and Lawrence. In this scene an early pope, Sixtus, ordains the young Lawrence a deacon and hands him a chalice, entrusting him with the treasure of the Church. Lawrence, the story goes, promptly gave that treasure away to the poor. The painted architecture around them is calm, gold-lit and unmistakably new Rome.