# St Sixtus Entrusts the Church Treasures to Lawrence [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ANGELICO, Fra]() - Date: 1401-1450 - Technique: Fresco, 271 x 205 cm ## Commentary In 1447, or perhaps earlier, Fra Angelico was in Rome, where he painted the private chapel of Pope Nicholas V with scenes from the lives of St Lawrence and St Stephen, frescoes which sum up the whole trend of his work. They possess a logical realism in their perspective settings, clarity of scale and narrative content, and restraint in their vigour. The colour is limpid, but with sufficient use of chiaroscuro to give substance to the figures; the use of continuous representation is kept to a minimum by the division of the scenes through differences in their architectural setting, but nowhere is the search for realism in the use of lighting effects allowed to destroy the unity of the whole, or the sense of the plane of the wall. The stories are told with a wealth of circumstantial and colourful detail: for instance the allusion to the Pope's decision to declare 1450 a Jubilee Year is shown by the two soldiers about to break down the walled-up door on the left but even a detail of this kind is never intrusive or merely included for decorative richness, but is at the heart of the narrative. ## Related artworks - [A Bishop Saint]() - [Adoration of the Magi and Man of Sorrows \(Cell 39\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Annalena Altarpiece \(detail\)]() - [Annalena Altarpiece]() - [Annalena Altarpiece \(without predella\)]() - [Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi]() - [Annunciation \(Cell 3\)]() - [Annunciation \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()