Condamnation de saint Laurent par l'empereur Valérien

Around 1447 a new pope, Nicholas V, set about turning a run-down medieval Vatican into a centre of learning, gathering scholars and Greek manuscripts. For his small private chapel he called in Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar already famous for painting as a form of prayer. This wall shows the early Christian deacon Lawrence brought before the Roman emperor Valerian, who sits enthroned and lifts his hand to condemn him. Lawrence wears a deacon's red robe stitched with little flames, a quiet forewarning of his death, since he was said to have been roasted alive on a gridiron. Fra Angelico sets the scene inside cool, measured classical architecture, the kind the pope's humanist circle admired. He worked here with assistants over about two years, and it is among the last great projects of his life.