Even though the figure of the Christ is not to be compared to the finest of the prophets, yet we find in the countenance the same characteristics as the other heads display. True, it looks worse than it really is, for a crack in the roof has damaged the mouth and beard, and the fresco has besides suffered in the restorer's hands.
It is a known fact, that a few months after Fra Angelico left, it was necessary to repair the roof of the chapel in which he had worked, on account of the rain that percolated there, to the great detriment of the paintings.
However this may be, it is certain that the heads of the prophets have sweetness of expression and nobility of character, and all the figures are remarkable for their fine form, dignified attitudes, free and simple draperies, combined with bright and vivid colouring. These qualities are not so visible in the compartment of our Lord and the adoring angels, which may with more certainty be attributed to Benozzo.
Fra Angelico returned to Rome on the 28th of September in that year (1447) and never went back to Orvieto, but his reasons for breaking his contract and leaving a work incomplete are not explained.
Perhaps he perceived the difficulties of the composition and was arrested by the terrifying dread--which his character and feeling would have magnified--of painting a Last Judgment in such grand proportions. Or he may have had an intuition, that his work would never be worthy of that famous building, especially as he was called on to depict the punishments of hell and the various feelings of sorrow, passion and despair in the damned souls, sentiments so foreign to his own nature. Or possibly the desire to finish the paintings entrusted to him in Rome by the new Pontiff Nicholas V., induced him to break his contract. In the absence of more precise records it is difficult to establish the truth.
Certain it is that Fra Angelico left Orvieto for Rome and that he painted there a "Studio" or Chapel for Nicholas V., for which the payment is entered in a register dated 1449, but "after this year," writes Müntz, "we find no more traces of the illustrious Dominican, in the books of the secret treasury."[62]
On January 10th 1452 Fra Angelico is again at Fiesole as prior of his convent, and in the same year the rulers of the Commune of Prato employed the good offices of Archbishop Antonino to induce Fra Angelico to paint the principal chapel of their church; but he refused, and the commission was given to Filippo Lippi.