Renaissance
Fra Angelico (1395–1455)
Italian International Gothic painter.
Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro, c. 1395–1455) took the name Fra Giovanni when he entered the Dominican order and was called by later ages 'Angelico' — the angelic friar — for the serene sweetness of his art. A friar-painter working in Fiesole, Florence, and Rome, he stands at the hinge between the gold-ground grace of International Gothic and the new science of the Early Renaissance: he kept the radiant colour and devotional tenderness of the older manner while absorbing Masaccio's solid figures, rational perspective, and consistent light.
His greatest work is the fresco decoration of the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, painted around 1440–1445 under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, who rebuilt the convent. In the friars' cells and corridors Angelico painted images of the utmost simplicity and stillness — an Annunciation glowing at the top of the dormitory stairs, a Noli me tangere and other scenes designed not as decoration but as aids to the friars' prayer and meditation. Everything superfluous is stripped away; the calm is a spiritual instrument.
Alongside the frescoes he painted radiant panel altarpieces such as the Annunciation now in the Prado, in which gold, pure colour, and the new perspective combine. Vasari, who revered him, records the tradition that Angelico would not take up his brush without first praying, that he wept as he painted the Crucifixion, and that he refused the archbishopric of Florence out of humility. Beatified in 1982, he is honoured as the patron of artists, and his name has become a byword for painting as an act of devotion.
The words the record keeps using: serene, radiant, devout, gentle, lucid, tender.
At a glance
- Lived 1395–1455
- Origin Italian
- Worked in Florence, Rome
- Era Renaissance
- Movements International Gothic, Early Renaissance
- Mediums Fresco, Egg tempera on panel
- Techniques Buon fresco, Tempera hatching, Gold ground and assist, Linear perspective
Works in the archive
- The Annunciation (Prado altarpiece), 1426 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid)
An early altarpiece Annunciation of jewel-bright colour and gold, staged in a delicate arcaded loggia beside an enclosed garden. At the upper left, Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise, tying the Fall to the… - Noli me tangere (Cell 1, San Marco), 1441 (Convent of San Marco, Florence (Cell 1))
In the first friar's cell at San Marco, Angelico painted the risen Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene in a flowering garden: she kneels and reaches toward him, and he gently draws back with the words 'Noli me tangere' —… - The Annunciation (San Marco corridor), 1443 (Convent of San Marco, Florence)
Painted at the head of the dormitory stairs where every friar would pass, this Annunciation sets the angel Gabriel and the Virgin under a slender arcaded loggia, both leaning gently toward one another with arms crossed…
What was said
Vasari reports the tradition that Fra Angelico never took up his brushes without first offering a prayer, that he wept as he painted the Crucifixion, and that he never retouched or altered his work, holding that whatever came was the will of God.
Vasari records that Angelico was so humble and unworldly that he declined the archbishopric of Florence offered him by the pope, recommending another friar in his place, and that he called himself content to serve God through his painting.
The frescoes of the San Marco cells were conceived not as decoration but as spare, lucid aids to Dominican prayer, their deliberate simplicity and even calm tuned to focus the individual friar's meditation on the sacred event.
What would Fra Angelico make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Fra Angelico", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Fra Angelico · Keep a life moment the way Fra Angelico would · Pictures made after Fra Angelico