Angelico

Angelico, FRA, the commonest designation of the great friar-painter—in full, 'Il beato Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole,' the blessed Brother John the angelic of Fiesole. Born in 1387 at Vicchio, in the Tuscan province of Mugello, in 1407 he entered the Dominican monastery at Fiesole, in 1436 he was transferred to Florence, and in 1445 was summoned by the pope to Rome, where thenceforward he chiefly resided till his death in 1455. Of course, his frescoes, such as have not perished, are all in Italy—at Cortona, at Fiesole, in the Florentine convent of San Marco (now a museum), at Orvieto, and in the Vatican chapel of Nicholas V. Of his easel pictures, the Louvre possesses a splendid example, 'The Coronation of the Virgin,' and the London National Gallery (since 1860) a 'Glory,' or Christ with 265 saints. One supreme aim pervades all the creations of Fra Angelico—that of arousing devotional feeling through the contemplation of unearthly loveliness. He has been styled the 'protagonist of pietistic painting;' and estimates of his paintings will vary as much as estimates of monasticism. Mr Ruskin says of him that 'by purity of life, habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition, he was enabled to express the sacred affections upon the human countenance as no one ever did before or since. . . . His art is always childish, but beautiful in its childishness.' See Miss Phillimore's Fra Angelico (1881) in the 'Great Artists' Series.