Coronation of the Virgin

The original purpose of this small gold-ground panel is not known. Its size and shape would suit a predella, the pedestal strip of an altarpiece, except that the Coronation of the Virgin almost never appears in one; the minute finish of the work suggests instead an object made for private devotion. The Museum now believes it to be an early painting by Fra Angelico — Guido di Pietro, the Dominican friar of Fiesole and Florence who became the great devotional painter of the early Florentine quattrocento — and notes that its authorship has been strengthened from the master’s workshop to the master himself in the years since it was acquired. It belongs to the period before the San Marco frescoes that made his fame, and it came to Cleveland with the collection of Elisabeth Severance Prentiss. The painting is held in the Cleveland Museum of Art.