APOLLO AWARDS 2025

21 November 2025

© David Owens 2025

The Ashmolean is delighted to announce that it has won a prestigious Apollo Magazine Award for the acquisition of Fra Angelico’s 'The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Magdalen'. The award was accepted by the Ashmolean’s Chair of the Board of Visitors, The Lord Lupton CBE, at a ceremony in London on the evening of 20 November.

The rare painting was acquired by the Ashmolean in November 2024 following a fundraising campaign with lead donations from Lord Lupton and David and Molly Lowell Borthwick; significant grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, and The Headley Trust; the generosity of more than 50 major donors; and a successful public appeal.

The magnificent work, which had been in a UK private collection for about two centuries, was sold to an overseas buyer and was at risk of leaving the country. Due to its value and importance, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (supported by Arts Council England) recommended that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport impose a temporary export stop on the work. In January 2024, the export deferral was announced, allowing the Ashmolean nine months to express interest in acquiring the work and raise the necessary funds to keep the painting in the UK.

The Ashmolean is now the only British museum outside London to hold work by Fra Angelico. 'The Crucifixion' joins a large triptych panel from later in the artist’s life, enabling visitors to appreciate the development of his style over the course of his career.

'The Crucifixion' is currently on loan to the acclaimed Fra Angelico exhibition, at the Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco, Florence (until 25 January 2026), which was also shortlisted for the Apollo Exhibition of the Year Award.

Dr Xa Sturgis, Director of the Ashmolean, says: ‘It is a tremendous honour to have won this prestigious award and hugely gratifying for the Ashmolean team and our many supporters who helped bring this remarkable painting into a public collection. We can’t wait to see it back on the Ashmolean's walls when it returns from Florence, where it will be enjoyed and studied by so many people for years to come.’

More about Fra Angelico's Crucifixion >

_{Image above: Lord Lupton and Ed Behrens, Editor of Apollo Magazine
© David Owens 2025}