Fra Angelico
The friar who painted light.
Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar in Florence who painted frescoes in the cells of the friary of San Marco. His pictures combine devout stillness with the new space of the Renaissance.
Fra Angelico was originally called Guido di Pietro and was born around 1395 in the Mugello valley north of Florence. He was already active as a painter before he entered the Dominican friary at Fiesole around 1420. There he took the name Fra Giovanni. The name Angelico, “the angelic one”, was given to him after his death.
In the 1430s he became a sought-after painter of altarpieces. The Annunciation in Cortona and a similar one in the Prado in Madrid are among his best known. Other important works are the Coronation of the Virgin in the Louvre and a large tabernacle for the linen merchants’ guild in Florence. The pictures combine the gold and clear colours of the Gothic with the new perspective and the more corporeal figures introduced by Masaccio.
When the Dominicans took over the friary of San Marco in Florence in 1436, Cosimo de’ Medici paid for its rebuilding. Fra Angelico and his assistants painted frescoes in the corridors and the friars’ cells over the following years. Each cell received a simple image, usually from the life of Christ, intended for the friar’s prayer and contemplation. The Annunciation at the top of the stairs is the most famous. The images are still and almost empty, with pale colours and gentle light. The friary is now a museum.
Fra Angelico was summoned to Rome by the pope and painted, among other things, a chapel in the Vatican for Nicholas V, with scenes from the lives of St Stephen and St Lawrence. For a time he also served as prior of the friary at Fiesole. He died in Rome in 1455 and is buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
He gained a reputation for piety and humility early on, and in 1982 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II. He is today the patron saint of artists. His art shows that the new techniques of the Renaissance could serve a heartfelt, spiritual kind of painting.