O Sepultamento de Cristo

This small panel was never meant to stand alone. Around 1440 it ran along the base of Fra Angelico's great altarpiece for San Marco in Florence, the Dominican convent that Cosimo de' Medici was then rebuilding at his own expense. It sat in the predella, the strip of little scenes beneath the main picture, directly under the Crucifixion. Christ is held upright at the mouth of the tomb by two mourners while Mary kneels in prayer. Fra Angelico was himself a friar at San Marco, painting for the walls and altars of the house he lived in. The altarpiece was later broken up, and this piece travelled north to Munich.