Lunetta della parete ovest nella Cappella Niccolina

This lunette is part of the private chapel of Pope Nicholas V, painted between 1447 and 1449 in the papal palace beside what is now the Vatican Museums. Nicholas was the scholar-pope who began gathering the library that grew into the Vatican's, and he had the friar-painter Fra Angelico decorate his small chapel with the life of Saint Stephen along the top and Saint Lawrence below. The upper scenes, set into these curved lunettes, show Stephen being ordained a deacon and handing out alms to the poor. Fra Angelico designed them, but much of the actual painting up here was carried out by his young assistant Benozzo Gozzoli, who would soon make his own name in Florence.