Art Class

Noli Me Tangere
1440-41

Fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence

Presentation in the Temple
1440-41

Fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence

Fra Angelico

(Guido di Pietro) (c. 1400-55): Florentine painter, and Dominican friar.

 

Although in popular tradition he has been seen as 'not an artist properly so-called but an inspired saint', Angelico was in fact a highly professional artist, who was in touch with the most advanced developments in contemporary Florentine art and in later life traveled extensively for prestigious commissions.

 

He probably began his career as a manuscript illuminator, and his early paintings are strongly influenced by International Gothic.

 

His most famous works were painted at S. Marco in Florence (now an Angelico museum). They are at once the expression of and a guide to the spiritual life of the community.  They attain a sense of blissful serenity.

 

In the last decade of his life Angelico also worked in Rome, where he frescoed the private chapel of Pope Nicholas V in the Vatican.  His particular grace and sweetness stimulated the school of Perugia.  Fra Bartolommeo, who followed him into the Convento di S. Marco in 1500, had something of his restraint and grandeur.

 

Vasari, who referred to Fra Giovanni as 'a simple and most holy man', popularized the use of the name Angelico for him, but he says it is the name by which he was always known, and it was certainly used as early as 1469.

 

The painter has long been called `Beato Angelico' (the Blessed Angelico), but his beatification was not made official by the Vatican until 1984.