Triptych: The Last Judgment

Fra Angelico's Triptych of the Last Judgment, painted around 1437 for the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, presents the final reckoning with the paradise of the saved on one wing and the torments of the damned on the other. This ambitious work demonstrates Fra Angelico's ability to encompass the full range of Christian eschatology within a portable altarpiece format. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The central Judgment scene is flanked by contrasting visions of salvation and damnation, with Fra Angelico's luminous palette creating an extraordinary chromatic distinction between the radiant garden of paradise and the dark, flame-lit inferno.