Fra Angelico

“ Fra Angelico was no lazy priest—besides his works elsewhere, Florence abounds with lovely images whose serene and blessed faces breathe the virtues of their author. The delicacy and softness for which he is remarkable never degenerates into insipidity. His pure taste made him conceive the highest beauty, his faith gave him a foretaste of beatitude, and he adorned with these attributes the beings whom alone he consented to represent, the saints and angels of Paradise. ”

“ Yonder, with the face and attitude of one who prays, painting a lovely angel with flame upon her forehead, with stars upon her robe and with a golden trumpet in her hand, is a man whose fancy has outgrown the margin, the full page even, of the beloved parchment book, and so he fills a whole wall with his vision from Paradise. Little need is there to name this painter-monk. It is Fra Angelico, the "Angelical Painter," Il Beato, "The Blessed." ”

“ In this masterly work Fra Angelico pours out with full hands the most vivid and intense feelings of his soul, and if he does not attain to grand dramatic power, he at least succeeds in depicting with rare ingenuity the varied expressions of sorrow, despair, hope and faith which animate each person, and in giving natural and life-like character and attitude to the various heads. ”

“ Sometimes, in our most rapt moods, the air about us seems filled with these ethereal beings, tending on the sick and dying, leading little children, ministering to prisoners as to Peter of old, bringing comfort to us in our sorrows. This, of course, is a fancy and yet it is such fancies that have made Fra Angelico's representations of angels a real joy to man through all the centuries since he painted them with more than mortal power. ”

“ In all the frescoes, whether he painted the gentle Virgin bending before the angel messenger, or tried to show the glory of the ascended Lord, the artist-monk would always introduce one or more of the convent's special saints, which made the brothers feel that the pictures were their very own. Fra Angelico had a kind word and smile for all the brothers. He was never impatient, and no one ever saw him angry, for he was as humble and gentle as the saints whose pictures he loved to paint. ”

“ Fra Angelico repeats the principal motive, but develops it according to his high ideal, his intense faith, and mystic sentiment. He gives to the Virgin an expression of infinite sweetness; to the angels a truly celestial charm, to the saints a serene expression of beatitude, and to the whole scene the azure divine character of a vision of Paradise.
High in the centre the Redeemer extends his right hand to add a brilliant gem to the crown of the Virgin, who sits near him, with hands crossed in loving reverence. ”

“ In one of Fra Angelico's pictures,—a representation of the Last Judgment,—he has tried his saintly hand at making devils indeed, and showing them busily at work, tormenting the poor, damned souls in fifty ghastly ways. Above sits Jesus, with the throng of blessed saints around him, and a flow of tender and powerful love in his own face, that ought to suffice to redeem all the damned, and convert the very fiends, and quench the fires of hell. At any rate, Fra Angelico had a higher conception of his Saviour than Michael Angelo. ”

“ No later painter learned to render with deeper force than Fra Angelico the one state of the spirit he could conceive--a passionate pious tenderness. Immured in his quiet convent, he apparently never received an intelligible impression of evil; and his conception of human life was a perpetual sense of sacredly loving and being loved. But how, immured in his quiet convent, away from the streets and the studios, did he become that genuine, finished, perfectly professional painter? No one is less of a mere mawkish amateur. ”

“ The beauty of the stories that Fra Angelico sets before us was as true to him as the beauty of the flowers he painted, and the landscape that met his eyes whenever he walked abroad. The modern world, whether it doubt or believe, cannot but recognise that the artist of San Marco has succeeded as much by his faith as by his art. The other frescoes of the Dominican House must be left for the fortunate minority who can visit them, but these two will be found to represent well and truthfully both the religious idea and the artistic achievement. ”

“ Thus it is not only from the exquisite delicacy of form, the spirituality of expression, and the sweet, reverent fancy in attitude, of the angels from which Fra Angelico derived his name, but also from the brightness of their golden wings, from the deep glow of their crimson, or scarlet, or azure robes, and from the clear shining of the stars on their foreheads, that one learns that he deserved that name as characteristic of his temper and his life. Something of the influence of the cloister shows itself in most of his larger works ”

“ The landscape in the background shows the usual defects of perspective, but the mountains shade off delicately against the distant blue of the sky, the plain is illuminated with infinite flowerets, and a rich verdure clothes the summit of the sacred hill. In the pilasters of the frame are small figures of Saints, some of the best and finest that Fra Angelico ever painted, and in the gables above the three arches Lorenzo Monaco has represented the "Noli me tangere," the "Resurrection," and the "Maries at the Sepulchre." ”

“ There is no advance towards realism, but a complete abandonment of the visionary and ecstatic type so marked in Fra Angelico. We come down to plain flesh and blood, and every personage in this long procession has posed for the drawing made for it. It is the most extraordinary agglomeration of pose-plastique in all the range of the Renaissance; and in the densest part of the crowd, and no matter what his action, every actor turns his face more or less so as to be seen and recognized by those who know him. ”

“ The chief merit of the pictures of Fra Angelico is the sweet and tender expression of the faces of his angels and saints, or any beings who are holy and good; he never succeeded in painting evil and sin in such a way as to terrify one ”

“ Standing well apart from the enthusiasts of both sides, the average man sees that Fra Angelico was an artist of remarkable attainments and at the same time a devout, God-fearing friar, who seems to have deserved a great part at least of the praise he received from the honeyed pen of Giorgio Vasari. Naturally enough the modern artist finds in Fra Angelico, or "Beato" Angelico as he is sometimes called, one of the most interesting painters of the fifteenth century, and he does not bother about the fact that his hero chanced to be a Dominican brother. ”

“ Fra Angelico's Madonnas are beings of unearthly beauty, and words fail to convey any idea of their ineffable loveliness and purity. His angels too are creatures of another sphere, and purer types have never yet been conceived in art. ”

“ It represents Christ as a pilgrim meeting two Dominican brothers, and gives an excellent suggestion of Fra Angelico at his best, revealing the deep feeling of the religious man, and the skill of the artist blended together in happiest and most inspired union. To have seen the picture in his mind, the artist must have been a deeply religious man; to have expressed the vision as he has expressed it in terms of line and colour, the devotee must have been a great artist. ”

“ And indeed he was anything but a brute this good Signor Angelo, whom owing to a natural tonsure--a rim of black hair still circling his smooth bald head--his friends were wont to nickname Fra Angelico. He had never indeed left his native place more than twice in his life, nor on either occasion gone further than Rome. But then Rome is the world, he would say. He who has seen Rome, has seen everything. ”

“ Left of the altar, opposite Fra Angelico's "Prophets," and arranged in exactly the same pyramidal form, is a magnificent group, representing the "Apostles," the Virgin being seated on the lowest tier with S. Peter and S. Paul. Very noble, impressive figures, powerfully and solidly painted, with broadly-draped, heavy-folded robes, they sit like rocks upon clouds as solid as hills.
These, with the two frescoes of Fra Angelico, complete the paintings of the first vaulting. ”

“ Thus Fra Angelico, placing his figures in ideal surroundings, believed at first that refined thought was sufficient to make a perfect picture, and he illuminated his little figures with superficial delicacy, surrounding them with azure and gold, and so idealized them that they are more like diaphanous apparitions than human beings. ”

“ Less spoiled perhaps by retouching, but yet in a deplorable condition, is the other painting, a Crucifixion, still existing in the Sacristy of the Convent. The Redeemer with extended arms, has His head drooping straight on the breast, and the legs are stiffened and curve to the right. A crown of thorns encircles the head, which is surrounded by a great aureole; but the head is small; and the face, with its insignificant features, lacks the intense expression which Fra Angelico usually succeeds in putting into similar subjects. ”

“ For these narrow cells, forty in number, Fra Angelico did his best work, believing, doubtless, with the ancient builders that "The gods see everywhere." The subjects selected were the events in Christ's life and to each cell was given one chapter, as it were, from the wondrous story. Nothing could more forcibly prove the absolute devotion of the painter, his total disregard for the attention of men, than his dedication of his best work to the narrow and dimly lighted cells of San Marco. ”

“ Pope Eugenius IV., who visited Florence when he was exiled from Rome, had settled for a while in Bologna until the anti-Pope Felix V. fell from power, and had then hastened back to Rome, and settled down to beautify the Vatican. Like all the great men of his generation he felt the spirit of the Renaissance in the air, and desired no more than leisure in order to respond to it. He remembered the clever [62] artist, whose work had charmed him in the days of his Florentine exile, and sent an invitation to Fra Angelico to come to Rome and decorate one of the chapels in the Vatican. ”

“ His pictures of Christ as man and boy are replete with humanity, and yet have the Divinity shining through the veils of flesh. No one but a man who believed firmly, completely and entirely in what he was painting could ever have given us these marvellous representations. It is easy to understand, then, that when it comes to his pictures of the saints Fra Angelico has given us, absolutely true to life, representations of them in various actions as their activities appeal to him. ”

“ The Pope who called Angelico to Rome did not live long after the painter's arrival there, but he did not die before he had shown special favor to the monk of San Marco.
Taking for granted that, because Angelico could paint such beautiful pictures he could do everything else equally well, he asked him to become the Archbishop of Florence, one of the most important church offices within the gift of the Pope. How we admire the good brother when he responded, with the simplicity which was so marked a characteristic of him, "I can paint pictures but I cannot rule men." ”

“ What matter if critics tell us that Angelico's knowledge of anatomy was defective and that it is fortunate for his angels that their creator represented them all closely draped? Their talk for centuries has not made the devout painter's fame one whit less, while all the time his angels have been bringing comfort to generations of men and women. ”

“ In the early days he approached the human body with some diffidence, and though a greater courage in this regard is the keynote of Renaissance painting, the [43] earlier timidity is hardly to be wondered at when we consider the attitude of the religious houses towards humanity in its physical aspect, and how necessary it was to avoid anything approaching sensuous imagery throughout that anxious period of transition. As he grew older and more confident of his powers, Fra Angelico seems to have freed himself from some of the restrictions that beset an artist who is also a religious. ”

“ The type of the Virgin, too, though its characteristic construction of features, and short and receding chin, are derived from the Sienese masters, especially from Lorenzetti, in Fra Angelico responds to an artistic idealization chosen by him as approaching more the divinity of her person. The flowing robes of the Virgin show her long and refined hands, but beneath that mantle he draws no feminine figure nor can one even guess at it. All the power of the artist is concentrated in her face ”

“ Fra Angelico's style is so individual and characteristic, that it might rather be considered as springing from his own disposition, 011developed under the influence of his time. Studying the works left in Florence by his great predecessors, leading a retired life, and purifying every idea, every inspiration in the fire of religion, Angelico was enabled, by meditation, to perfect the models of the best artists of the "trecento", among whom we should opine that the influence of Orcagna in his frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel of S. M. Novella, was greater even than that of Giotto. ”

“ As we have before pointed out, the calm spirit of Fra Angelico avoided realistic representation; his figures always suggest love, faith and resignation, but are never agitated; like the soul of their author, they are incapable of violent action; therefore when these should be drawn, the representation falls below reality. ”