St Lawrence Distributing Alms

Nicholas V was elected pope in 1447 and set about turning a battered Rome back into a capital. He began the collection that became the Vatican Library, drew up plans for rebuilding Saint Peter's, and had Fra Angelico decorate the small chapel beside his own rooms. The lower walls went to Lawrence, the deacon who looked after the Roman church's money in the third century and, ordered to hand the treasure over to the emperor's officers, gave it away to the poor instead and was executed for it. Here he stands at the door of a church paying out coins to a crowd that includes a blind man and a woman with a child. The painted architecture is calm and classical, closer to what Nicholas was commissioning in Rome than to anything Lawrence would have known. Two payments to Angelico for this work are recorded, in February and March 1448.