Fra Angelico

c. 1395/1400-1455 • Italian • Painter • Renaissance

"[Fra Angelico] was a simple and most holy man ... most gentle and temperate, living chastely, removed from the cares of the world ... humble and modest in all his works." - Vasari, mid-16th century

A Dominican monk and a painter for the order, Angelico created works that were conservative rather than experimental; his interest was in presenting Christian teachings, and not in trying new ideas. While he might incorporate linear PERSPECTIVE in his picture, he would not hesitate to place a figure in a space with a ceiling too low to stand up in, as is true of his well-known Annunciation FRESCO of c. r 440-4 5. Generally modest and direct in his compositions, Angelico was attentive to some decorative details, a patch of lawn covered with wildflowers, for example, and the angel's wings he painted in bands of mellow color. Rejecting the massive forms and expressiveness of MASACCIO, Angelico painted figures with serene, doll-like faces. His spare but still tangible and real-appearing frescoes for the Monastery of San Marco (where the Annunciation described above is located) were spiritual images that impressed van der VEYDEN, who stopped in Florence during his pilgrimage to Rome in 1450. Through van der Weyden, Angelico's ideas reinforced the NORTHERN RENAISSANCE artists' interest in making images that are appropriate to their particular environment in both subject and style.