Fra Angelico (1387-1455) Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1436-1441. Tempera on panel. 105 x 164. Museo di San Marco, Florence, Italy
For our last week of our picture study of Fra Angelico's paintings, we looked at his Lamentation over the Dead Christ. We were amazed at all of the faces of the different people in the picture. They look so real and so individualistic compared to past artists.
We decided to make our own pictures, following this project on That Artist Woman which combines many of the skills we have been working on. We have a chance to work with a different kind of pastels -oil instead of the chalk pastels which we have loved working with. With this project we also get to include the halos in gold that we have been seeing in Fra Angelica's work.

With Gail's templates, this project was easy enough for my first grader to do with my help, but interesting enough for my eighth graders. Even with the templates, there is some room for individuality. It is a great project.

They are set up to so you start with the largest first and then progressively build up your design. You have to draw your own faces though. Start with #1 and then layer each piece in order. Only trace any new lines When your design is finished go over all pencil lines with a sharpie marker. It needs to be permanent marker to last thru the painting stage. Using oil pastels add some color. You want to have some of the paper showing thru so it will pick up the black paint. Mix colors together and add shading and highlight if you want. Be sure to do the background. Now take some black tempera paint and paint over your design. We are not crumpling our paper like we have done with other resists, we want to keep it nice and flat. The oil pastel will resist the paint. It will bead up like it has done here. Let it dry. The paint gives the piece almost a wood grain pattern so it looks like it was painted on a wood panel hundreds of years ago. While you are waiting for it to dry cut up some pieces of cardboard. Using the edges stamp on some silver and gold acrylic paint for a gilded effect. We want our halos to be quite decorative. 




It is very exciting to see how the oil pastels...
resist the paint, creating an wood grain pattern so it looks like it was painted on a wood panel in the time of Fra Angelico.


student work, age 6

Lastly, the gold "foil" paint is added to the halos.

student work, age 16, special needs

student work, age 9



Which Fra Angelico painting we studied was your favorite?


For more on Fra Angelico...

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