The Painting That Looks Back: Fra Angelico’s Crucifixion

Podcast: Download

SSA057: Only one figure in Fra Angelico’s Crucifixion looks directly at you — and it isn’t Christ.

Alix Murray and Kathryn Laffrey launch their first shared Rabbit Hole with a painting Alix saw in person at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum: Fra Angelico’s early panel The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Magdalen, one of the earliest surviving works by the Dominican friar-painter — a subject he would return to again and again across his career. Alix went to see it with an inquirer from the lay Dominicans she guides in Oxford, calling Fra Angelico “one of our fellow Dominicans.”

The two walk through where every gaze in the composition lands. The angels, painted in profile, look toward Christ. Saint John and Mary Magdalene, each turned in a demanding three-quarter angle, look toward Christ too. Only the Virgin Mary breaks the pattern — she looks straight out at the viewer, sorrowful, gesturing toward her son, pulling the whole image into a conversation rather than a scene to observe from a distance.

Alix and Kathryn get into the technical craft up close: the incised outlines scored into the gold background, the layered washes that build up the painting’s depth, and brushwork so fine in Mary’s veil that it looks like it was painted with a single hair. Tucked into a small living tree growing out of the cross is a tiny painted pelican feeding her chicks — a traditional symbol of Christ’s self-sacrifice — rendered smaller than a postage stamp. Kathryn connects it to an embroidery project of her own, a Sacred Heart of Jesus stitched with a green, living crown of thorns.

They also talk about what it means to see sacred art in person rather than in a book or online — the difference between viewing an image and interacting with it — and Alix points listeners back to the fuller story of Fra Angelico’s life and work from an earlier episode, “Light from Light.”

Get all new episodes automatically and for free:

Follow by Email | Watch this episode and subscribe on YouTube.

Help us continue to offer The Secrets of Sacred Art. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

by
Sacred Art 1-300 Secrets of Sacred Art