Harrowing of Hell
“God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled. Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; … He goes to free the prisoner, Adam, and his fellow prisoner, Eve, from their pains, … And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”
“God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled. Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; … He goes to free the prisoner, Adam, and his fellow prisoner, Eve, from their pains, … And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”
Supplying the imagery for this ancient homily on Holy Saturday, a beautiful meditation on the moments between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Painted as a fresco, with dry pigment and water painted directly onto wet plaster, the medium captures both the transitional nature of the event and the reality that these Holy Souls – and Christ himself – were dust, and unto dust returned.
The artist, a Dominican monk of the early 15th century, had attracted attention that drew him away from choirbook illumination to beautifying convent and chapel walls. He propelled the early Italian Renaissance with his treatment of light, space, and human form and emotion. Despite his fame, he earned the nickname of “angelic one” through his humble and gentle nature as much as through his inspired art. He was canonized in 1982 by Pope Saint John Paul II, who said of his paintings, “These are his miracles.” Fra Angelico’s contemporaries agreed that for this Dominican “to paint was to pray.” His legacy is the living prayer his paintings have become.
