2023-2025
Commissioned by Palla Strozzi in 1429 in memory of his father Onofrio for the sacristy of the church of Santa Trinita, which had been converted into the family chapel, the Deposition is one of the first milestones in Fra’ Angelico’s mature output. Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) mentions it in his Lives of the Artists informing us that, “He put such great diligence [into it] that it can be numbered among the best works that he ever made.”
In the painting, Fra’ Angelico abandoned the traditional model of the medieval altarpiece characterized by the juxtaposition of several separately painted panels divided from one another by columns and pinnacles. He introduced a new model based on a unified vision, within which the narrative unfolds in a considerably broader space built in accordance with the rules of perspective, thereby acquiring a more solemn, monumental dignity in what is an almost theatrical setting.
Another painter-monk, Camaldulese friar Lorenzo Monaco (c. 1370–c. 1425), had begun work on the altarpiece, painting the three pinnacles and the predella in 1425. Following Lorenzo Monaco’s death, Strozzi entrusted the commission to Fra’ Angelico, who engineered a masterful blend using both his innovative, contemporary style and the more traditional Gothic work of Lorenzo Monaco to produce an altarpiece admirable in its unity.
The painting has the makings of a fully-fledged stage set in which 28 figures crowd the foreground. Scholars have endeavored to discover whether the figures depicted include portraits of personalities of the period, specifically of members of the Strozzi family. The figure in contemporary costume kneeling in the foreground has been identified as the Blessed Alessio Strozzi (1350–1383) who appears to be playing a mediator’s role between the viewer and the event depicted.
