# Paradise [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [NARDO DI CIONE]() - Date: 1351-1400 - Technique: Fresco ## Commentary Paradise c. 1355 Fresco Cappella Strozzi di Mantova, Santa Maria Novella, Florence At the north end of the transept of Santa Maria Novella two brothers who were heads of a very large and active workshop, Andrea di Cione \(known as Orcagna\) and Nardo di Cione provided the altarpiece and frescoes for the Strozzi Chapel, one of the most important decorative programs of the time. Dominican commitment to orthodoxy, order, and the institutional church is evident on the left wall of the chapel where a Paradise shows the elect arranged row upon row, around and beneath the figures of the enthroned Divinity and the Virgin. Both figures are crowned; the figure of God even holds a sceptre. In this configuration the Virgin - or metaphorically Maria Ecclesia \(the Church\) - shares unmistakably the power of the Godhead on the model familiar from Roman thirteenth-century mosaics. ## Related artworks - [Christ Blessing]() - [Christ Blessing]() - [Coronation of the Virgin]() - [Crucifixion]() - [Five Saints]() - [Five Saints]() - [Hell \(detail\)]() - [Hell \(north wall\)]() - [Last Judgment \(detail of the blessed\)]() - [Last Judgment \(detail of the damned\)]() - [Last Judgment \(west wall\)]() - [Madonna and Child with Sts Peter and John the Evangelist]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()