使徒の聖体拝領

Fra Angelico painted this straight onto the plaster of a small room in the convent of San Marco in Florence, around 1440. He was a Dominican friar himself, and the convent had just been rebuilt for the community by the architect Michelozzo, paid for by Cosimo de' Medici, the city's real ruler. The frescoes in the friars' cells were not made to impress visitors. Each one was a quiet aid to prayer for the single monk who lived and slept in that room. So Angelico strips the scene almost bare, with a plain background and no clutter. And he makes an unusual choice for a Last Supper. Rather than the drama of the betrayal, he shows the apostles kneeling to take communion, the moment the sacrament begins. Judas is still there, at the edge, marked out by the dark shadow where the others have gold haloes.