The Dominican Blessed

The men and women crowded into this narrow panel are all Dominicans, in the black cloak and white habit of the order, and none of them has a full halo. Thin gold rays spread from each head instead, the sign painters used for the blessed, people honoured after death but not yet declared saints. One friar holds a book and a small red flame. His name is written on his habit, Vincent, for Vincent Ferrer, the Spanish preacher who had died in 1419. When Fra Angelico painted this, around 1423 to 1424, the preacher had been dead only a few years, and his presence is why the altarpiece cannot have been made before 1419. He was declared a saint in 1455. Among the kneeling figures in the bottom row is Agnes of Montepulciano, a Tuscan prioress who waited much longer, until 1726.