A 600-year-old altarpiece by Fra Angelico has returned to its original home — the church of San Domenico in Fiesole, the Tuscan hillside convent the painter joined as a young man — after a two-year restoration that uncovered details hidden for centuries.

The Fiesole Altarpiece, painted between 1420 and 1423, is regarded as Fra Angelico's first monumental commission and his earliest surviving altarpiece. Born Guido di Pietro, Fra Angelico — the name means "Angelic Friar" — painted the work for the very convent where he had taken his vows. It depicts a Madonna holding the Christ Child, surrounded by eight angels and four saints: Barnabas, Thomas Aquinas, Dominic and Peter Martyr.

The painting has a complicated history. Originally a late Gothic triptych — a three-panel altarpiece on a gold ground, with side pilasters and a predella, the narrow painted strip running along the base — it did not stay that way. In 1501, more than 45 years after Fra Angelico's death, Lorenzo di Credi was commissioned to convert the triptych into a single unified image. He painted over the gold background with an embroidered canopy and two arches opening onto a landscape. The original predella and side pilasters were later sold off; the predella ended up at the National Gallery in London. (The Art Newspaper)

The restoration, funded by Friends of Florence — a foundation whose president is Simonetta Brandolini — set out to disentangle those layers. Conservator Daniele Rossi removed old yellowed varnishes and previous overpainting, and used beeswax bleached with a milk solvent to lift stains from Lorenzo di Credi's painted sky. The cleaning revealed hidden details beneath the surface and, for the first time, allowed conservators to differentiate clearly between the hands of Fra Angelico and Lorenzo di Credi. (The Art Newspaper)

The structural work was just as exacting. A team led by Roberto Buda replaced the wooden inserts — known as butterflies — at the back of the panel and built a modern chestnut support system fitted with springs designed to adapt to temperature and humidity changes. The altarpiece was completed in time for a recent major exhibition on Fra Angelico in Florence before being returned to its place in San Domenico. (The Art Newspaper)

What makes this return quietly remarkable is that the altarpiece has now come back not just to a museum wall but to the exact setting Fra Angelico painted it for — the church where he prayed, in the convent where he lived. The predella may be in London, the gold ground may be gone, and a later painter's sky may still hang behind the saints. But the work is home, and a visitor standing in San Domenico today sees it closer to the way Fra Angelico intended than at any point in the last five centuries.