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Angelico expressed profound human sentiments in his figures; he modeled with light and intense, brilliant colors, as opposed to Masaccesque chiaroscuro. His mastery of Brunelleschian perspective permitted daringly innovative compositions with convincing spatial effects in architectural settings.
- Childhood
- Early Training and Work
- Mature Period
- Late Period
- The Legacy of Fra Angelico
Baptised Guido di Pietro, little is known of the friar-painter Fra Angelico's childhood. Giorgio Vasari, writer of Lives of the Artists(1550), proposed 1387 as Angelico's date of birth, but many art historians, citing his stylistic correlation with contemporary Italian painter Masaccio, think it more likely that he was born around 1395. While his b...
Angelico likely apprenticed with the artist Lorenzo Monaco (c. 1370-1425), a manuscript illuminator who was in considerably high demand in Florence at the time. Art historian Diane Cole Ahl explained the two artists' stylistic similarities, writing that they shared a "distinctive palette, unequalled in subtlety by any other artist of the day, in wh...
In 1436, Pope Eugenius IV granted ownership of the convent at San Marco to the Dominican Observants, and here Fra Angelico created some of his most famous works. During the renovation of the convent in late 1437-8, Cosimo de' Medici undertook the financing of the complete renovation of the complex and commissioned Angelico to decorate the walls of ...
By July 1445, Angelico was summoned to Rome by Pope Eugenius IV, where he stayed until 1450. In 1447, however, Angelico was recorded in Orvieto, working closely alongside his pupil and assistant Benozzo Gozzoli decorating the Chapel of San Brizio in the city's cathedral. The project was left unfinished due to financial issues stemming from the magi...
In 1982, Pope John Paul II expressed his admiration for Angelico and beatified him. While Fra Angelico's piety was legendary, his artistic innovations and his use of color inspired many Renaissance artists, including Luca Signorelli and Raphael, who went so far as to incorporate his portrait into their respective works Sermon and Deeds of the Antic...
- Italian
- Vicchio di Mugello, Florence
Fra Angelico, OP (born Guido di Pietro; c. 1395 – 18 February 1455) 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".
Born in the Mugello about 1395 and named Guido di Pietro, Fra Angelico probably received part of his artistic training in the workshop of Lorenzo Monaco (ca. 1370–1425), a Camaldolese monk and the leading painter and manuscript illuminator in Florence prior to his death.
In commemoration of the five hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Fra Angelico (about 1395–1455), one of the foremost artists of the Italian Renaissance, The Metropolitan Museum of Art set out to reexamine his career and to establish a more historically accurate profile of the innovative, extraordinarily gifted "angelic friar," in ...
Fra Angelico (c.1400–1455) The Fitzwilliam Museum. (b nr. Vicchio, c.1395; d Rome, 18 Feb. 1455). Florentine painter, a Dominican friar. His nickname means ‘the angelic brother’, and in popular tradition he has been seen as ‘not an artist properly so-called but an inspired saint’ (Ruskin); however, he was in fact a highly professional ...
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Who is Fra Angelico & Fra Filippo Lippi?
National Gallery of Art Collection. A Medici commission believed to be the work of Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1440/1460) is a colorful depiction of the moment when the three kings, led by a miraculous star, discovered the Christ child.
