Florence, Beato Angelico's Deposition shines again after restoration

An early Florentine Renaissance masterpiece is back to shine in the Museo di San Marco: Beato Angelico’s Deposition of Christ, part of the Santa Trinita Altarpiece, is once again on view after complex restoration work. Thanks to the support of the Friends of Florence Foundation and the intervention of restorers Lucia Biondi (who worked on the pictorial surface) and Roberto Buda (who instead supervised the work on the wooden support), the work has been restored to its original luminosity and depth, eliminating the opacities accumulated over time.

The important restoration confirms the collaboration between the Regional Directorate National Museums of Tuscany of the Ministry of Culture and Friends of Florence, already the promoter of the new layout of the Sala del Beato Angelico. This room holds the world’s largest collection of the master’s panels, including masterpieces such as the Bosco ai Frati Altarpiece.

The Deposition will be on display until September 2025, when it will become part of the major Angelico exhibition, the first monographic show dedicated to the artist in Florence since 1955. The exhibition, expected at Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco, is curated by Carl Brandon Strehlke, Angelo Tartuferi and Stefano Casciu. The exhibition will offer an extraordinary overview of Angelico’s work, thanks to international loans and a section devoted to his early works and miniatures.

“The Deposition of Santa Trinita, installed in the Sacristy in 1432, is placed at the end of the first period of the master’s activity, active from about 1415, and constitutes an extraordinary conceptual and stylistic turning point. ”The excellent results achieved by the restoration," Angelo Tartuferi and Marco Mozzo point out, "will facilitate future studies and research to clarify the many still unresolved questions posed by the work, including those about the precise identification of the many characters who witness the event against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful landscapes of early Renaissance Italian painting.

“The San Marco Museum is a place very dear to Friends of Florence, and Beato Angelico’s works are of fundamental importance to our donors,” stresses President Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda. “Along with other projects carried out in this magnificent museum, we have followed a real path through the restoration of Beato Angelico’s works in the Cloister, in the Chapter House and then in the Hall that is dedicated to him here. I thank on behalf of the Foundation Stefano Casciu, Regional Director National Museums of Tuscany, Angelo Tartuferi, former Director of San Marco and the current Museum Director Marco Mozzo for giving us the opportunity to contribute to the preservation of this fascinating work; I also thank Lucia Biondi who carried out the intervention on this wonderful panel. Our thanks also go to Peter Fogliano and Hal Lester, our such generous and enlightened donors who made the entire intervention possible.”

A revolutionary masterpiece

The Deposition was commissioned between 1429 and 1432 by Palla Strozzi in memory of his father Onofrio for the Sacristy of the church of Santa Trinita, which had been converted into a family chapel. The work was cited by Giorgio Vasari recalling that Angelico “put so much diligence that one can, among the best things he ever did, number it.” The work marks a turning point in sacred painting: Angelico abandoned the medieval scheme of altarpieces divided into separate compartments, creating a unified composition, rich in perspective depth and pathos. The result is a theatrical scene of great intensity, with twenty-eight characters participating in the dramatic moment of Christ’s deposition.

The work was initially entrusted to the Camaldolese Lorenzo Monaco, who by 1425 had painted the three cusps and the predella of the altarpiece. Later, the Strozzi family commissioned the completion to Beato Angelico, who managed to integrate his own innovative language with the Gothic style of his predecessor. The result is a harmonious altarpiece in which the figures acquire monumentality and the sacred narrative takes on an unprecedented solemnity.

The scene is dominated by the body of Christ, supported with difficulty by a few figures placed on ladders on either side of the cross, while the weeping Marys look on sorrowfully. In the foreground stands out the kneeling figure of a young man in contemporary clothing, identified as Blessed Alessio Strozzi, who seems to act as an intermediary between the viewer and the sacred event. The work may also contain portraits of members of the Strozzi family, a detail that has attracted the attention of critics.

One of the most striking elements brought out by the restoration is the background landscape: a wide view with Tuscan hills and a turreted city that alludes to both Jerusalem and Florence. The intense light enveloping the scene enhances the finely decorated robes and the flowery meadow in the foreground, enriching the composition with naturalistic details.

The restoration: two years of work

The two-yearrestoration work restored the original transparency and luminosity of Angelico’s painting, which had been compromised by old varnishes and ancient cleaning. The surface of the work appeared flattened and lacking depth, while the landscape in the background was obscured. The restoration was handled by Lucia Biondi (pictorial surfaces) and Roberto Buda (wooden support), with gilding consultation by Andrea Montuori, and photographic documentation by Ottaviano Caruso. The analytical investigations were carried out by CNR-Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale, by Donata Magrini, Roberta Iannaccone, and Barbara Salvadori, while the radiographic survey was performed by Diagnostica per l’Arte Fabbri di Davide Bussolari. Transportation and handling were instead provided by Alternativa di Maurizio Palatresi, insurance by Cantani Gagliani snc, and finally the video to document the restoration is by Art Media Studio.

The cleaning operations brought to light the subtle nuances of color and the refined luministic rendering typical of the artist. The phase of pictorial retouching made it possible to fill in small gaps caused by the degradation of time (and in particular by the old varnishes that had literally torn off the thinnest layers, and by the abrasions of the old cleanings), restoring continuity to the composition. Finally, the final varnish was designed to enhance the color saturation without compromising the lightness of the painting.

In addition to the restoration, diagnostic investigations were conducted to analyze the relationship between the parts painted by Lorenzo Monaco and those made by Angelico. Although some aspects remain to be clarified, the intervention allowed a better understanding of the evolution of the work and the stylistic dialogue between the two artists.

With the return of the Deposition to the Museo di San Marco, visitors will be able to admire a masterpiece that marks a turning point in Renaissance painting and that, thanks to the restoration, finds a condition more similar to the original one. An opportunity to rediscover the genius of Beato Angelico before the major exhibition that will celebrate him in 2025.

“If restoring the works of great artists is always challenging because of the burden of responsibility that this entails, in the case of the work on Beato Angelico’s Deposition of Santa Trinita the stakes were very high and the purpose of the project very ambitious,” says restorer Lucia Biondi, “but I was able to count on the support of the deep bond established with Angelico, whose Final Judgment and the Bosco ai Frati Altarpiece I also restored, also in the Museo di San Marco.”

Florence, Beato Angelico's Deposition shines again after restoration

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