A remarkable early crucifixion scene by one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance, Fra Angelico, has been saved for the British nation after the Ashmolean museum in Oxford raised £4.48m to acquire it. The work is one of the earliest surviving panels by the artist, who was one of the pioneers of emotion and realism in Western painting.
The small-scale scene, which dates to the 1420s, is the oldest known rendering of a crucifixion by Fra Angelico and “sets the sort of model that he was to follow throughout his career,” Xa Sturgis, the director of the Ashmolean, tells The Art Newspaper. It depicts Christ on the cross flanked by two angels, with Mary Magdalene—clutching the cross in despair—the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist below. The background of the work is rendered in luminous gold, while above the cross is a pelican piercing its chest, a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice.
“It’s both monumental and moving and simple and complex, and there are even tiny things that show him thinking in new ways about picture making,” Sturgis says of the work. “Almost every crucifixion before this time, to show the cross was real wood, would, [for example], depict one side and then a shadow down it. Fra Angelico doesn’t do that. He’s looking at the crucifixion straight on, and so he just shows the shadow under the beam. He's understanding new laws of perspective that are being developed in Florence at precisely this moment.”
The figures, Sturgis continues, “play this spatial dance as well. We've got the Virgin facing one way, a really beautiful figure of St John reversing her posture. And then the two garments are reversed: she’s got blue on pink and he's got pink on blue. And the lining of the Virgin's cloak picks up the arms of Mary Magdalene. It’s an incredibly subtle but confident piece of picture making from a young man.”
The acquisition was made possible after the UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, deeming the work to be of significant cultural importance, announced a temporary export bar in January. The work had been sold at Christie’s London, to an overseas buyer, for £5m last year, but the bar prevented the work leaving the country—in the hope that a domestic buyer could be found.
A “champion” was appointed to contact relevant museums who might have an interest in the work, and Jennifer Sliwka, recently appointed the Ashmolean’s keeper of Western art, took a keen interest. The museum launched a fundraising campaign, which gained the support of, among others, the Art Fund, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Headley Trust, the Ashmolean’s chairman, Lord Lupton, and more than fifty private donors including the scholar Anthea Hume and the Old Master expert Fabrizio Moretti.
Faced with a tight deadline of 29 October and the challenges of fundraising over a summer, fundraising came right up to the line. “Two weeks before the deadline, I would say we were not sure,” Sturgis says. “And then there were some key moments such as the Headley Trust [a Sainsbury family charity] coming good in the most fantastic way, and some individuals stepping in. It’s demonstrated how much the Ashmolean can rely on its supporters.”
A game-changing attribution
The crucifixion comes with a rich and fascinating history. While little is certain about its origins, it has been in the UK for at least 200 years, understood to have been acquired by William Bingham Baring, 2nd Lord Ashburton in the 19th century and passed down the family.
It was only identified as by Fra Angelico in the 1990s, having previously been attributed to Lorenzo Monaco, thought to be his former master. Writing on the discovery at the time, Francis Russell, then deputy UK chairman of Christie’s, said: “It seems astonishing that Fra Angelico's name has not previously been invoked in connexion with [this] devotional panel… Every gesture is perfectly weighed. The sensitivity of the painter’s use of colour is evident in the way the blood both of Christ and the pelican above is matched in the robe of the Magdalen. With Fra Angelico nothing was accidental.”
In the catalogue notes for the Christie's sale, there is a reference to a possible connection between the work and two “probably somewhat... later” panels of saints, suggesting they may at one stage formed a triptych. Writing to The Art Newspaper, Sliwka says this cannot be ruled out but further investigation is needed.
Fra Angelico was born Guido Di Pieter in Rupecanina, a hamlet in Tuscany, in 1395. He was a Dominican friar as well as an artist, and was known to have joined the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole by 1423. He was first recorded as a painter in 1417, establishing his own practice the year after. Among his most famous works is a series of panels—a crucifixion among them—he created for the convent of San Marco in Florence, which still exist in situ today and capture the astonishing progress he made in rendering space and feeling.
As an artist, he conveyed a sense of deep spirituality through paint, the chronicler Giorgio Vasari claiming that he could not depict the crucifixion “without tears running down his cheeks”. After his death, Fra Angelico was named “the Angelic Painter”, and is known today in Italy as Beato Angelico (Blessed Angelic One). His crucifixion scenes, says Sturgis, are often restrained, “but nonetheless pack a really powerful emotional punch.”
The Ashmolean owns another, later, work by Fra Angelico, a hinged triptych painted in 1450-55 depicting the Virgin and Child with angels and a Dominican saint flanked by St Peter and St Paul © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Very few pieces by Fra Angelico exist in UK collections. The National Gallery and the Courtauld Gallery in London own fragments of altars, while the Ashmolean also has a later triptych by the artist in its holdings. In the short term the newly acquired crucifixion scene will go on display in the museum’s early Renaissance collections, near the triptych, while staff develop plans for “something more ambitious”, Sturgis adds.
“Acquisitions are really important for museums,” the director continues. “They shift the narratives one can tell, they're energising. There are not many museums in this country where a coherent story of 15th-century Italian art can be told and this helps the Ashmolean cement its place as one of them.”