A Space for the Soul: Fra Angelico’s Last Judgment for Santa Maria degli Angeli

In the 1420s, Fra Angelico painted a mystical Last Judgment for Santa Maria degli Angeli, the urban monastery of the Camaldolese Order. Using advanced spatial and lighting techniques, Fra Angelico created spaces for the beholder’s imagined soul: a heavenly court, celestial Jerusalem, and the abyss of Hell. He also depicted the soul’s state of illumination, characterized by either lustration or shadowing. I argue that his metaphysical imagery, particularly his perception of the “place of God,” relates to the Christian Platonism of the Cappadocian Fathers, whose writings were read and discussed by Ambrogio Traversari and his circle of humanist friends at Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Rebekah Compton is Associate Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the College of Charleston. She received her PhD in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley and completed a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University. She is currently a fellow at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Her book Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence will be published by Cambridge University Press in March of 2021.

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Scientific Organization: Katharine Stahlbuhk