Le Jugement dernier

Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar who painted, and around 1425 he made this for a church in Florence with an unusual job in mind. It was not an altarpiece. It formed the back of a bench where the priests and their attendants sat during high mass, so this vision of the sorted dead sat quite literally at their backs. Christ presides at the top, one hand raised toward heaven, the other lowered toward hell. Down the centre runs a long row of open graves, drawn to shrink into the distance so the flat panel gains real depth. On the left, at the gates of paradise, angels and the saved join hands and dance in a ring, a note of joy few painters of hell allowed themselves.