サン・ピエトロ・マルティーレの三連祭壇画

This is the earliest painting we can firmly pin to Fra Angelico, thanks to a convent account from 1429 that records payment for it. He was a Dominican friar, and he made it for a house of his own order, a new Dominican convent named for Saint Peter Martyr near Florence's Porta Romana. In the centre the Virgin sits enthroned with the Christ child, flanked by Dominican saints, and along the base run small scenes of Peter Martyr, killed by an assassin who splits his skull as he scrawls credo, I believe, in his own blood. Around this same time the young Masaccio was making painted figures look newly solid and real, and you can feel Fra Angelico watching, giving his gold-ground saints a firmer weight.