Martirio di San Lorenzo

In 1447 a new pope, Nicholas V, brought a Dominican friar-painter down from Florence to decorate his private chapel in the Vatican. Nicholas was the scholar-pope who began the Vatican Library, and he wanted his small prayer room lined with the lives of the early Roman deacons. Fra Angelico gave him Saint Lawrence, martyred in Rome in 258 for handing the Church's treasure to the poor rather than the emperor. Here Lawrence is stretched over an iron grill above the flames while soldiers work the fire and the emperor Valerian looks on from his throne. The friar, known for the tenderness of his Annunciations, sets even this scene in calm, orderly architecture, the violence held inside a room as bright and balanced as any of his gentler works.