Fra Angelico was a Dominican Friar who began his career as an illuminator but achieved fame and renown as an artist.
His last major commissions were monumental fresco cycles in St Peter's and the Vatican Palace, Rome. Sources disagree on the original purpose of the drawing, describing it variously as a study for the figure of Christ in the Deposition, possibly executed for an altarpiece now at San Marco, or possibly a later copy from the latter. The character of the drawing also suggests that it could have been executed as a religious image in its own right, in keeping with the contemporary private devotional practice in which the viewer is asked to participate on a personal level with the suffering of Christ.
Provenance
Francesco da A. Gali Fabra, Barcelona; Pedro Succarats, Paris, 1938; Colonel Norman Colville, M.C.; the Trustees of the N.R. Colville Will Trust.