The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs

The top row of this panel is the Old Testament, the people Christian teaching counted as forerunners of Christ, the ones who had pointed toward him before he came. The National Gallery counts 21 of them, and several carry scrolls lettered with their names. Only one of them looks straight out at us. That is John the Baptist, in his rough camel-hair tunic, and he points toward the centre of the altarpiece, where the risen Christ once stood. Fra Angelico painted this around 1423 to 1424 as the panel nearest Christ on one side. Below the forerunners come the male martyrs holding their palms, Saint Stephen in green with the stone of his stoning. The bottom row belongs to women saints, Saint Agnes with her lamb and Saint Thecla in red, honoured in Christian tradition as the first woman martyr.