Il Beato Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole ("the Beatified Friar
John the Angelic of Fiesole") (Vicchio di Mugello, Florence 1395 –
Rome February 18, 1455), better known in the English-speaking world as Fra
Angelico ("the Angelic Friar"), or in Continental Europe as
Beato Angelico ("the Blessed Angelic One") was a famous painter
of the Florentine state in the 15th century, the most famous
representative of pietistic painting. He is often, but not accurately,
termed simply "Fiesole," which is merely the name of the town
where he first took the vows. His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's
Vite.
Biography
He was born Guido di Pietro, at Vicchio, in the Tuscan province of Mugello,
near Fiesole towards the end of the 14th century, of unknown but seemingly
well-to-do parentage, and was baptized Guido or Guidolino (friars used to
change their name when entering the orders). Still a young boy he asked
for admittance at the convent of San Domenico in Florence, where Dominican
friars were known for their rigid rules (and were called "the
Observers"). He completed his novitiate in Cortona in 1408 and became
a full Dominican monk in Florence about 1418 with the name of "Fra
Giovanni da Fiesole"; "The Angelic" is a laudatory term
which was assigned to him at an early date and which we find in use within
thirty years after his death, but he was not properly beatified until
1984.
Before becoming a friar, he and his brother were trained as manuscript
makers: Fra Angelico originally received training as an illuminator. The
painter Lorenzo Monaco may have contributed to his art training, and the
influence of the Sienese school is discernible in his work. He had several
important charges in the convents he lived in, but this did not limit his
art, which very soon became famous. He had the patronage of Cosimo de'
Medici. According to Vasari, the first paintings of this artist were in
the Certosa of Florence; none such exist there now.
Early works
Among his early works are the Annunciation of Cortona, the Coronation of
the Virgin in the convent of Fiesole, and the Deposition of Christ
executed for the Church of the Holy Trinity in Florence, paintings that
Vasari indicated as "painted by a saint or an angel".
His earliest extant performances, in considerable number, are at Cortona,
to which he was sent during his novitiate, and here apparently he spent
all the early years of his monastic life. His first works executed in
fresco were probably those, now destroyed, which he painted in the convent
of S. Domenico in this city; as a fresco-painter, he may have worked
under, or as a follower of, Gherardo Starnina. From 1418 to 1436 he was
back at Fiesole; in 1436 he was transferred to the Dominican convent of S.
Marco in Florence.
In the convent of San Marco, in the years 1438 to 1445, Fra Giovanni lived
with St. Antoninus Pierozzi. Here he decorated the cells, the hall of the
Chapter, the corridors, the colonnade, the church altarpiece; he may have
studied about this time the renowned frescoes in the Brancacci chapel in
the Florentine church of the Carmine and also the paintings of Orcagna.
Rome
In 1445, after the success of these works he was invited to Rome by the
pope Eugenius IV, who reigned from 1431 to 1447. He appointed another
Dominican friar, a colleague of Angelico, to be archbishop of Florence in
1445. If the story (first told by Vasari) is true—that this appointment
was made at the suggestion of Angelico only after the archbishopric had
been offered to him, and declined by him on the grounds of his inaptitude
for so elevated and responsible a station.
Eugenius, and not (as stated by Vasari) his successor Pope Nicholas V,
must have been the pope who sent the invitation and made the offer to Fra
Giovanni, for Nicholas only succeeded in 1447. The whole statement lacks
authentication, though in itself credible enough. It is certain that
Angelico was staying in Rome in the first half of 1447; and he painted in
the Vatican the Cappella del Sacramento, which was afterwards demolished
by Paul III. In June 1447 he proceeded to Orvieto, to paint in the
Cappella Nuova of the cathedral, with the cooperation of his pupil Benozzo
Gozzoli. In 1450, Fra Angelico became Prior of the convent of San Marco
and later Archbishop of Florence. He afterwards returned to Rome to paint
the chapel of Nicholas V, and died in Rome in 1455, where he lies buried
in the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva. He decorated many of the rooms of
the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, including many of the
individual cells.
He used to say "He who does Christ's work must stay with Christ
always". This motto granted 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 (Pope John Paul II, 1982)".
Cause for canonization
According to all the accounts which have reached us, few men on whom the
distinction of beatification has been conferred could have deserved it
more nobly than Fra Giovanni. He led a holy and self-denying life,
shunning all advancement, and was a brother to the poor; no man ever saw
him angered. He painted with unceasing diligence, treating none but sacred
subjects; he never retouched or altered his work, probably with a
religious feeling that such as divine providence allowed the thing to
come, such it should remain. 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.
Bearing in mind the details already given as to the dates of Fra
Giovanni's sojournings in various localities, the reader will be able to
trace approximately the sequence of the works which we now proceed to name
as among his most important productions. In Florence, in the convent of S.
Marco (now converted into a national museum), a series of frescoes,
beginning towards 1443; in the first cloister is the Crucifixion with St.
Dominic kneeling; and the same treatment recurs on a wall near the
dormitory; in the chapterhouse is a third Crucifixion, with the Virgin
swooning, a composition of twenty life-sized figures (the original blue
sky, painted on top of a red ground, has unfortunately chipped away); an
Annunciation, the figures of about three-quarters life-size, in a
dormitory; in the adjoining passage, the Virgin enthroned, with four
saints; on the wall of a cell, the Coronation of the Virgin, with Saint
Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Saint Benedict, Dominic, Saint Francis, and Saint
Peter Martyr; two Dominicans welcoming Jesus, dressed as a pilgrim; an
Adoration of the Magi; and the Marys at the Sepulchre. All these works are
later than the altarpiece which Angelico painted (as before mentioned) for
the choir connected with this convent, and which is now in the academy of
Florence; it represents the Virgin with Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian (the
patrons of the Medici family), Dominic, Peter, Francis, Mark, John
Evangelist and Stephen; the pediment illustrated the lives of Cosmas and
Damian, but it has long been severed from the main subject. In the Uffizi
Gallery, an altarpiece, the Virgin (life-sized) enthroned, with the Infant
and twelve angels. In S. Domenico, Fiesole, a few frescoes, less fine than
those in S. Marco; also an altarpiece in tempura of the Virgin and Child
between Saints Peter, Thomas Aquinas, Dominic and Peter Martyr, now much
destroyed. The subject which originally formed the predella of this
picture has, since 1860, been in the National Gallery, London, and
worthily represents there the hand of the saintly painter. The subject is
a Glory, Christ with the banner of the Resurrection, and a multitude of
saints, including, at the extremities, the saints or beati of the
Dominican order; here are no fewer than 266 figures or portions of
figures, many of them having names inscribed. This predella was highly
lauded by Vasari; still more highly another picture which used to form an
altarpiece in Fiesole, and which now obtains world-wide celebrity in the
Louvre—the Coronation of the Virgin, with eight predella subjects of the
miracles of St. Dominic.
For the church of the Santa Trinità in Florence, Angelico executed a
Deposition from the Cross, and for the church of the Angeli, a Last
Judgment, both now in the Florentine Academy; for S. Maria Novella, a
Coronation of the Virgin, with a predella in three sections, now in the
Uffizi: this is one of his masterpieces. In Orvieto cathedral he painted
three triangular divisions of the ceiling, portraying respectively Christ
in a glory of angels, sixteen saints and prophets, and the Virgin and
Apostles: all these are now much repainted and damaged. In Rome, in the
Chapel of Nicholas V, the acts of Saints Stephen and Lawrence; also
various figures of saints, and on the ceiling the four evangelists. These
works of the painter's advanced age, which have suffered somewhat from
restorations, show vigour superior to that of his youth, along with a more
adequate treatment of the architectural perspectives. Naturally, there are
a number of works currently attributed to Angelico, but not really his;
for instance, a St Thomas with the Madonna's girdle, in the Lateran
museum, and a Virgin enthroned, in the church of S. Girolamo, Fiesole. It
has often been said that he commenced and frequently practised as an
illuminator; this is dubious and a presumption arises that illuminations
executed by Giovanni's brother, Benedetto, also a Dominican, who died in
1448, have been ascribed to the more famous artist. Benedetto may perhaps
have assisted Giovanni in the frescoes at S. Marco, but nothing of the
kind is distinctly traceable. A folio series of engravings from these
paintings was published in Florence, in 1852. Along with Gozzoli already
mentioned, Zanobi Strozzi and Gentile da Fabriano are named as pupils of
Angelico.
We have spoken of Angelico's art as "pietistic"; this is in fact
its predominant character. His visages have an air of rapt suavity,
devotional fervency and beaming esoteric consciousness, which is intensely
attractive to some minds and realizes beyond rivalry a particular ideal—that
of ecclesiastical saintliness and detachment from secular fret and
turmoil. It should not be denied that he did not always escape the
pitfalls of such a method of treatment, the faces becoming sleek and prim,
with a smirk of sexless religiosity which hardly eludes the artificial or
even the hypocritical; on other minds, therefore, and these some of the
most masculine and resolute, he produces little genuine impression. After
allowing for this, Angelico should nevertheless be accepted beyond cavil
as an exalted typical painter according to his own range of conceptions,
consonant with his monastic calling, unsullied purity of life and
exceeding devoutness. Exquisite as he is in his special mode of execution,
he undoubtedly falls far short, not only of his great naturalist
contemporaries such as Masaccio and Lippo Lippi, but even of so distant a
precursor as Giotto, in all that pertains to bold or life-like invention
of a subject or the realization of ordinary appearances, expressions and
actions—the facts of nature, as distinguished from the aspirations or
contemplations of the spirit. Technically speaking, he had much finish and
harmony of composition and color, without corresponding mastery of light
and shade, and his knowledge of the human frame was restricted. The
brilliancy and fair light scale of his tints is constantly remarkable,
combined with a free use of gilding; this conduces materially to that
celestial character which so pre-eminently distinguishes his pictured
visions of the divine persons, the hierarchy of heaven and the glory of
the redeemed.
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