Calvary may not have been Fra Angelico’s favourite theme; Vasari records the pious tradition that ‘whenever he painted a Crucifixion the tears would stream down his face’. John Pope-Hennessy would not have us disregard the story simply because it has no contemporary sanction for, quoting William James, he reminds us that ‘many saints ... have possessed what the Church traditionally reveres as a special grace, the gift of tears.’

In the mid-1430s Fra Angelico painted a Crucifixion with Mary and Saints John and Dominic on the refectory wall at St. Dominic’s Priory, Fiesole, but from quite early in its life the fresco suffered from damp and was frequently restored. In 1879 it was photographed, detached from its wall, mounted on canvas and sold, ultimately to the Louvre. The taushaped cross stands some twelve feet high on its conventional mound and the inscription panel is attached to the top with a lath.

Angelico was to use this design more than once. The composition is built on an upright rectangle whose top is the horizontal beam of the cross, ABCD in Figure 1. Diagonals AC and BD intersect axes IG and EF at point H in the diagram, coinciding with the Saviour’s feet and linking the bystanders with the cross. Geometry, however, is only the basis of the plan, which is developed as a symmetrical rhythm in Figure 2.