성모의 안식과 승천

This panel is the front of a box. Four of them were made for the Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, tall gabled containers that held relics and were brought out and carried in procession on the Virgin's feast days, and Fra Angelico painted the fronts somewhere between 1424 and 1434, in the years he was a friar at Fiesole. Two scenes share the surface. Below, the apostles stand around the Virgin's bier. Above, she rises on gold in a ring of angels with instruments. Three of the four are still in Florence, in the museum at San Marco. This one came onto the market in the 19th century, and Isabella Stewart Gardner bought it in London in 1899, the first painting by Fra Angelico to reach the United States.