Blessed Fra Angelico
Also known as
- Angelico of Fiesole
- Beato Angelico
- Fra Giovanni
- Giovanni da Fiesole
- Giovanni de Fiesole
- Guido di Pietro
- John of Fiesole
- Painter of the Angels
Profile
Joined the Dominicans in Fiesole, Italy in 1407, taking the name Fra Giovanna. He was taught to illuminate missals and manuscripts, and immediately exhibited a natural talent as an artist. Today his works can be seen in the Italian cities Cortona, Fiesole, Florence, and in the Vatican. His dedication to religious art earned him the title Angelico.
Born
Readings
Though Fra Angelico completed the cycle of purely supernatural art, he also led the way to that wonderful fusion of the supernatural and the natural in which Italian art culminated a century later. He was the last disciple of Giotto, the first harbinger of Raphael. – Cosmo Monkhouse
To Fra Angelico belongs the glory of fixing, in a series of imperishable visions, the religious ideal of the Middle Ages, just at the moment when it was about to disappear forever. – Georges Lafenestre
While the artists about him were absorbed in mastering the laws of geometry and anatomy, Fra Angelico sought to express the inner life of the adoring soul. The message that his pictures convey might have been told almost as perfectly upon the lute or viol. His world is a strange one – a world not of hills and fields and flowers and men of flesh and blood, but one where the people are embodied ecstasies, the colors tints from evening clouds or apocalyptic jewels, the scenery a flood of light or a background of illuminated gold. His mystic gardens, where the ransomed souls embrace, and dance with angels on the lawns outside the City of the Lamb, are such as were never trodden by the foot of man in any paradise of earth. – John Addington Symonds
MLA Citation
- “Blessed Fra Angelico“. CatholicSaints.Info. 30 April 2024. Web. 6 May 2024. <>