Art and culture being accessible to all is “fundamental”, the Ashmolean Museum director has said, after securing nearly £5 million in funding to save a rare Italian Renaissance painting. A temporary export bar was granted on the crucifixion painting by the Renaissance master Fra Angelico, to allow the Oxford University institute to raise the £4.48 million needed to buy it in a private treaty sale.
Painted in the 1420s, The Crucifixion With the Virgin, Saint John The Evangelist And The Magdalen is the earliest surviving panel painting by the artist. The Ashmolean director, Dr Xa Sturgis, told the PA news agency it was a “really exciting moment” for the museum to acquire such an “important work” after they secured the funds by the October 29 deadline. “It’s a very beautiful painting, it’s a very moving painting.
I think its quality, I would hope, speaks for itself, but it’s also a very important painting,” he said. “It’s certainly the earliest surviving crucifixion by Fra Angelico and Fra Angelico was one of the key artists of the Florentine Renaissance and it’s a subject that he painted again and again throughout his career. “And with this picture, he sets the way in which he approaches the subject and so it’s an exciting picture because it’s a young artist at the beginning of his career.
” The Ashmolean also has another Fra Angelico painting from the end of his career, which will allow visitors to see his development as an artist in a free.