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Your galleryCoronation of the Virgin
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Follow the blue mantle from the angel’s hands to the kneeling Virgin, then look at the patterns pressed into the gold behind them.
Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar in Florence born Guido di Pietro, painted this small panel early in his career. Christ crowns the kneeling Virgin while an angel lifts her mantle, and gold covers nearly every surface. The panel is the right size for the base of an altarpiece, but its subject almost never appeared there, so the Cleveland Museum of Art thinks it may have been made for private prayer.
tempera and gold on wood panel · Framed: 45.5 x 51.5 x 8.5 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Late Gothic and Early Renaissance
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Coronation of the Virgin
- Artist
- Fra Angelico (Italian, 1400–1455)
- Date
- 1420s
- Medium
- tempera and gold on wood panel
- Dimensions
- Framed: 45.5 x 51.5 x 8.5 cm (17 15/16 x 20 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.); Unframed: 27 x 37.2 cm (10 5/8 x 14 5/8 in.)
- Credit line
- The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.