Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico, O.P. was a Dominican friar and Italian Renaissance painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, then worked in Rome and other cities. All his known work is of religious subjects.

He was known to contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (English: Friar John of Fiesole) and Fra Giovanni Angelico (Angelic Brother John). In modern Italian he is called Beato Angelico (Blessed Angelic One); the common English name Fra Angelico means the "Angelic friar".

In 1982, Pope John Paul II beatified him in recognition of the holiness of his life, thereby making the title of "Blessed" official. Fiesole is sometimes misinterpreted as being part of his formal name, but it was merely the town where he had taken his vows as a Dominican friar, and would have been used by contemporaries to distinguish him from others with the same forename, Giovanni. He is commemorated by the current Roman Martyrology on 18 February, the date of his death in 1455. There the Latin text reads Beatus Ioannes Faesulanus, cognomento Angelicus-"Blessed John of Fiesole, surnamed 'the Angelic'".

Vasari wrote of Fra Angelico that "it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety."

Biography
Early life, 1395-1436
Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro in the hamlet of Rupecanina in the Tuscan area of Mugello near Fiesole, not far from Florence, towards the end of the 14th century. Nothing is known of his parents. He was baptised Guido. The earliest recorded document concerning Fra Angelico dates from 17 October 1417, when he joined a religious confraternity or guild at the Carmine Church, still under the name Guido di Pietro. This record indicates that he was already a painter, as is evident from two records of payment to Guido di Pietro in January and February 1418, for work done in the church of Santo Stefano del Ponte. The first record of Angelico as a friar dates from 1423, the first reference to Fra Giovanni (Friar John), following the custom of those entering one of the older religious orders of taking a new name. He was a member of the convent of Fiesole. The Dominican Order is one of the medieval mendicant Orders. Mendicants generally lived not from the income of estates but from begging or donations. Fra, a contraction of frater (Latin for 'brother'), is a conventional title for a mendicant friar.

According to Vasari, Fra Angelico's initial training was as an illuminator, possibly working with his older brother Benedetto, also a Dominican and an illuminator. The former Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, now a state museum, holds several manuscripts thought to be entirely or partly by his hand. The painter Lorenzo Monaco may have contributed to his art training; the influence of the Sienese school is discernible in his work. He trained also with master Varricho in Milan Despite quite a few moves of the convents where he lived, this did little to constrain his artistic output, which rapidly acquired a reputation. According to Vasari, his first paintings were an altarpiece and a painted screen for the Charterhouse (Carthusian monastery) of Florence. Nothing remains of these today.

From 1408 to 1418, Fra Angelico was at the Dominican friary of Cortona, where he painted frescoes, mostly now destroyed, in the Dominican Church, and may have been assistant to Gherardo Starnina or a follower of his. Between 1418 and 1436 he was back in Fiesole, where he executed a number of frescoes for the church and the Fiesole Altarpiece. This was allowed to deteriorate, but has since been restored. A predella of the altarpiece remains intact and is conserved in the National Gallery, London; a great example of Fra Angelico's genius. It shows Christ in Glory surrounded by more than 250 figures, including beatified Dominicans. This period saw the painting of some of his masterpieces, including a version of The Madonna of Humility. This is well preserved and the property of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, on loan to the MNAC of Barcelona. Also completed at this time were an Annunciation and a Madonna of the Pomegranate, at the Prado Museum.

San Marco, Florence, 1436-1445
In 1436, Fra Angelico was one of a number of the friars from Fiesole who moved to the newly built convent or friary of San Marco in Florence. This propitious move, placing him at the heart of artistic life of the region, attracted the backing of Cosimo de' Medici. He was one of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the city's governing authority (or "Signoria"), and founder of the dynasty that was set to dominate Florentine politics for much of the Renaissance. Cosimo had a cell reserved for himself at the friary so that he might retreat from the world.

It was, writes Vasari, at Cosimo's urging that Fra Angelico set about the task of decorating the convent, including the magnificent fresco of the Chapter House, the much reproduced Annunciation at the top of the stairs leading to the cells, the Maesta (or Coronation of the Madonna) with Saints (cell 9), and many other devotional frescoes, smaller in format but of a remarkable luminous quality, depicting aspects of the Life of Christ that adorn the walls of each cell.

In 1439 Fra Angelico completed one of his most famous works, the San Marco Altarpiece at Florence. It broke new ground. Not unusual had been images of the enthroned Madonna and Child surrounded by saints, the custom was that the setting looked heaven-like, saints and angels hovering as ethereal presences rather than earthly substance. But in the San Marco Altarpiece, the saints stand squarely within the space, grouped in a natural way as if conversing about their shared witness of the Virgin in glory. This fresh genre, Sacred Conversations, was to underlie major commissions of Giovanni Bellini, Perugino and Raphael.

The Vatican, 1445-1455
In 1445 Pope Eugene IV summoned him to Rome to paint the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter's, later demolished by Pope Paul III. Vasari suggests this might have been when Fra Angelico was offered the Archbishopric of Florence by Pope Nicholas V, to turn it down, recommending instead another friar. The story seems possible, and even likely. However, the detail does not tally. In 1445 the pope was Eugene IV. Nicholas was not to be elected until 6 March 1447. The archbishop in question during 1446-1459 was the Dominican Antoninus of Florence (Antonio Pierozzi), canonised by Pope Adrian VI in 1523. In 1447 Fra Angelico was in Orvieto with his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, executing works for the Cathedral. Among his other pupils were Zanobi Strozzi.

From 1447 to 1449 Fra Angelico was back at the Vatican, designing the frescoes for the Niccoline Chapel for Nicholas V. The scenes from the lives of the two martyred deacons of the Early Christian Church, St. Stephen and St. Lawrence may have been executed wholly or in part by assistants. The small chapel, with its brightly frescoed walls and gold leaf decorations gives the impression of a jewel box. From 1449 until 1452, Fra Angelico was back at his old convent of Fiesole, where he was the Prior.

Death and beatification
In 1455, Fra Angelico died while staying at a Dominican convent in Rome, perhaps on an order to work on Pope Nicholas' chapel. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

When singing my praise, don't liken my talents to those of Apelles. Say, rather, that, in the name of Christ, I gave all I had to the poor.

The deeds that count on Earth are not the ones that count in Heaven.

I, Giovanni, am the flower of Tuscany.

Apelles (see main article) was a highly renowned painter of Ancient Greece, whose output, now completely lost, is thought to have centred chronologically around 330 BCE.

On display near the main altar is a marble tombstone, an exceptional honour for an artist at that time. Two epitaphs were written, probably by Lorenzo Valla. The first reads:

"In this place is enshrined the glory, the mirror, and the ornament of painters, John the Florentine. A religious and a true servant of God, he was a brother of the holy Order of Saint Dominic. His disciples mourn the death of such a great master, for who will find another brush like his? His homeland and his order mourn the death of a distinguished painter, who had no equal in his art." Inside a Renaissance style niche is the painter's relief in Dominican habit. A second epitaph reads:

"Here lies the venerable painter Brother John of the Order of Preachers. May I be praised not because I looked like another Apelles, but because I have offered to you, O Christ, all my wealth. For some, their works survive on earth; for others in heaven. The city of Florence gave birth to me, John."

The English writer and critic William Michael Rossetti wrote of the friar:

From various accounts of Fra Angelico's life, it is possible to gain some sense of why he was deserving of canonization. He led the devout and ascetic life of a Dominican friar, and never rose above that rank; he followed the dictates of the order in caring for the poor; he was always good-humored. All of his many paintings were of divine subjects, and it seems that he never altered or retouched them, perhaps from a religious conviction that, because his paintings were divinely inspired, they should retain their original form. He was wont to say that he who illustrates the acts of Christ should be with Christ. It is averred that he never handled a brush without fervent prayer and he wept when he painted a Crucifixion. The Last Judgment and the Annunciation were two of the subjects he most frequently treated.

Pope John Paul II beatified Fra Angelico on 3 October 1982, and in 1984 declared him patron of Catholic artists.

Angelico was reported to say "He who does Christ's work must stay with Christ always". This motto earned him the epithet "Blessed Angelico", because of the perfect integrity of his life and the almost divine beauty of the images he painted, to a superlative extent those of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025