Oxford's Ashmolean Museum saves Fra Angelico masterpiece to go on public display from December

'The Crucifixion' is one of the earliest surviving panel paintings by Fra Angelico

The magnificent work, which has been in the UK for about two centuries, was sold to an overseas buyer and was at risk of leaving the country.  Due to the work’s value and importance to the nation, the Reviewing Committee on the Exports of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, which is supported by the Arts Council, recommended that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport put a temporary export license stop - known as a deferral - on the work.  In January 2024, the export deferral was announced, allowing the Ashmolean nine months to express interest in acquiring the work and raise the necessary funds to keep the painting in the UK.                   

A private treaty sale has enabled the Ashmolean to acquire the work for £4.48 million, a substantial reduction in its market price. Now acquired, the painting will go on free public display for the benefit of visitors, students, scholars, and schoolchildren in perpetuity.

Fra Angelico (active 1417; died 1455), was both a Dominican friar and one of the most celebrated artists of the Italian Renaissance and is best known in Italy today as Beato Angelico or ‘Blessed Angelic One’. His paintings are characterised by their extraordinary psychological penetration, compelling naturalism and distinctive colour palette of blue, pink-red and gold.

Painted in the 1420s, The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Magdalen is one of Fra Angelico’s earliest works and exemplifies the power, beauty, and sensitivity for which he would later become known. Most of Fra Angelico’s paintings are large-scale frescoes or monumental altarpieces that remain in situ in the Dominican churches and convents in his native city of Florence and its surroundings and in the Vatican. This painting, in contrast, is one of the few surviving small-scale works on panel by the artist. It offers extraordinary insight into both Fra Angelico’s innovative painterly style and the development of European painting more broadly.

There are very few paintings by Fra Angelico in British public collections – a fact noted by the Reviewing Committee when considering their recommendation. Outside of London, it is only the Ashmolean that is fortunate enough to preserve a work by the master and his studio in its collection. This work, a hinged triptych that depicts the Virgin and Child with angels and a Dominican saint flanked by Saints Peter and Paul, is currently on display in the Museum’s gallery of Early Italian Art. The Crucifixion will soon hang alongside the later work, allowing visitors to appreciate both how the artist’s style developed over the course of his career and the extent to which his delicate, emotive approach was already established by the 1420s.

Fra Angelico’s Crucifixion will join the Ashmolean’s important collection of Italian Renaissance artworks that includes paintings by Paolo Uccello and Titian, and major drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo. The acquisition of The Crucifixion expands this preeminent collection further and will inspire a total rehang of the Museum’s Italian Renaissance galleries, which have not been redisplayed since 2009. The acquisition of The Crucifixion underscores the Ashmolean’s role as an important centre for the study of Italian Renaissance art.

At the Ashmolean, The Crucifixion will also serve as a teaching resource for the University of Oxford where it will be of particular interest not only to the History of Art and History departments but also to the Department of Theology and Religion as well as Blackfriars Hall, the Dominican community established in 1221 located next to the Ashmolean.

By keeping The Crucifixion in this country and by placing it on public view for the first time we will be able to demonstrate its significant contribution to the understanding of the Italian Renaissance and Fra Angelico’s oeuvre and pinkensure that future generations will have the opportunity to study the innovations of fifteenth-century Florentine painting first hand.

The Lord Lupton CBE, Chair of the Board of Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, says: ‘This acquisition represents a collective outpouring of support from so many generous funders and individuals, aligned in their desire for such an important Renaissance picture to be shared with the widest possible audience. I am delighted that the Ashmolean Board has played such a leading part in the campaign and look forward to the joy and wonder that the painting will inspire.’

Fra Angelico’s Crucifixion is a wonderful acquisition for the Ashmolean, building on and transforming our early Renaissance collection. I am thrilled that millions of visitors who come through our doors will now be able to enjoy this beautiful, moving and important work – the earliest surviving painting by the artist of a subject he was to return to again and again throughout his career. Raising close to £4.5 million in six short months has been no easy task in the current climate, and I am immensely grateful to friends old and new who have helped us over the line with only days to spare.

Dr Xa Sturgis CBE, Director of the Ashmolean Museum

Professor Jennifer Sliwka, Head of the Department of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, says: ‘Fra Angelico was recognised as having ‘a rare and perfect talent’ by the famous artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari in the 16^th century, and his work was subsequently praised by the great Victorian artist and author John Ruskin who described it ‘as near heaven as human hand or mind will ever or can ever go.’ I am thrilled that Angelico’s Crucifixion will enter public ownership for the first time allowing Ashmolean visitors the opportunity to experience his painterly skills and ability to evoke profound emotional and psychological states first hand. The idea that this innovative and beautiful work by one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance will continue to inspire and to move visitors to the Museum for centuries to come fills me with joy and I am hugely grateful to the funding bodies and individuals who have made this possible for all our benefit.’

Andrew Hochhauser KC, Chairman of the Reviewing Committee says: ‘The Reviewing Committee is delighted that the Ashmolean is welcoming this remarkable work into their public collection, ensuring it will inspire and educate people from across the country for generations to come. This acquisition represents our commitment to preserving our national treasures and enriching the cultural fabric of our communities.’

Simon Thurley, Chair of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, says: ‘Fra Angelico's masterpiece, The Crucifixion, having long been in private ownership, is in uniquely fine condition, and a rare and worthy addition to the Ashmolean's important collection of Renaissance Art.  The National Heritage Memorial Fund exists to create an outstanding collection of the UK’s finest heritage as a permanent memorial to those have given their lives for the UK. We are delighted that The Crucifixion is now part of that incredible publicly accessible collection.’

Jenny Waldman, Director, Art Fund, says: ‘Very few paintings by Fra Angelico, one of the great painters of the Italian Renaissance, are held in UK collections. I’m thrilled that, with the generosity of our supporters and National Art Pass members, Art Fund has been able to help the Ashmolean Museum to acquire this outstanding addition to its collection, where it will go on public display for the first time in this country. I'm sure that the painting will captivate visitors and inspire scholars for many years to come.