Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico

Born	c. 1395, Vicchio, Republic of Florence
Died	18 February 1455, Rome, Papal States
State of life	Professed Dominican priest; painter
Church or affiliation	Order of Preachers (O.P.)
Ecclesial status	Blessed; title and cult confirmed on 3 October 1982
Recognition	Immemorial title recognized and liturgical cult granted in 1982

Fra Angelico was an Italian Dominican friar and painter whose frescoes and altarpieces unite disciplined craft, Dominican theology, and contemplative attention to the mysteries of Christ.

Overview

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (born Guido di Pietro; c. 1395 – 18 February 1455), known posthumously as Fra Angelico (/ˌfrɑː ænˈdʒɛlɪkoʊ/ FRAH an-JEL-ik-oh, Italian: [ˈfra anˈdʒɛːliko]; 'Angelic Friar/Brother') or in Italian as Beato Angelico ('Blessed Angelic One'), was an Italian Dominican friar and painter active during the early Florentine Renaissance.

Angelico created a series of frescoes for the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, where he received the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici. His works include the San Marco Altarpiece and the Deposition of Christ, both made for the convent of San Marco. Painting exclusively religious subjects throughout his career, Angelico completed commissions in Rome under the patronage of Popes Eugene IV and Nicholas V. Angelico was a pioneer of the artistic trends that came to distinguish the early Renaissance, namely linear perspective and a greater attention to depth and form than had been practised in the late Medieval period.

Angelico was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. In 1984, John Paul declared him the patron of Catholic artists.

Life

Origins and formation

Born Guido di Pietro near Florence, the future Fra Angelico trained as a painter and illuminator before entering the Dominican observant community at Fiesole with his brother. He took the religious name Fra Giovanni and was ordained a priest. Workshop collaboration and inherited artistic conventions formed his craft; the familiar name Angelico arose from a reputation that grew during and after his life. These circumstances belong to a real human history rather than a devotional legend. Catholic biography attends to family, culture, freedom, and grace without reading a later canonical judgment backward into every childhood event.

Vocation and service

Fra Angelico painted altarpieces for churches and the celebrated fresco cycle at San Marco in Florence, where images served the prayer of Dominican friars. Commissions later took him to Orvieto and Rome, including work for Pope Nicholas V. His art combined technical innovation with Scripture and liturgy, but should not be reduced to illustration or treated as if artistic beauty mechanically proved sanctity. The vocation took shape through prayer, the sacraments, Scripture, and duties toward particular neighbors. Its ecclesial fruit is best understood as a response to Baptism, never as fame pursued for its own sake.

Christian witness

Witnesses remembered humility, prayer, communal observance, and reluctance to separate painting from service of God. His figures invite contemplation through color, light, space, and restrained emotion. The Church's recognition concerns the Christian life of the friar-painter; it does not declare every attribution authentic, every aesthetic judgment doctrinal, or all religious art equal in spiritual value. This Christian witness points toward Christ and the universal call to holiness. Remembering it truthfully means neither making suffering desirable nor treating every choice, opinion, or later retelling as if the Catholic Church had canonized it.

Modern museums often detach panels from the altars and communities for which they were made, while restoration and attribution remain scholarly questions. Catholic appreciation can welcome that scholarship and still recover liturgical purpose. Fra Angelico's example dignifies artistic labor as a vocation without implying that gifted artists possess a canonical rank because audiences call their work sacred. A sound account distinguishes documented events, contemporary testimony, and the Church's later judgment. That discipline protects both historical truth and authentic devotion, especially where illness, violence, politics, or disputed memories are involved.

Ecclesial recognition

Cause and present status

On 3 October 1982 Saint John Paul II formally recognized the title Blessed long accorded to Fra Angelico and granted liturgical cult in his honor. The act confirmed an immemorial reputation rather than concluding an ordinary modern beatification process. In 1984 the pope also named him patron of Catholic artists, without canonizing him as a Saint. Cause language is juridically exact: opening an inquiry, recognizing heroic virtues or martyrdom, beatification, and canonization are different acts. The rank stated here follows the latest competent ecclesiastical record available on 30 August 2026.

Liturgical and devotional scope

The confirmed beatific cult authorizes limited public cult of Blessed Fra Angelico in places and communities covered by competent liturgical provisions; it does not extend his public cult to the universal Church as canonization would. His memorial is associated with 18 February, and his O.P. postnominal identifies the Order of Preachers rather than an artistic society or honorary academy. Popular prayer remains subject to the Church's discipline and should never be used to imply that an unexamined favor is an authenticated miracle, that an ordinary object is a relic, or that private enthusiasm creates a feast. Approved calendars and competent pastors govern public liturgical observance.

Biography

He was known to his contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole ('Friar John of Fiesole'), reflecting the town where he joined the Dominican Order, and Fra Giovanni Angelico ('Angelic Brother John'). In modern Italian, he is referred to as Beato Angelico ('Blessed Angelic One') following his beatification by Pope John Paul II.

Early life, 1395–1436

Fra Angelico was born around 1395 in the Tuscan region of Mugello, specifically in the town of Vicchio near Fiesole. He was baptised Guido di Pietro and had a younger brother named Benedetto. The earliest known record of him is dated 17 October 1417, when he attended a religious confraternity or guild at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel under the name Guido di Pietro. Payments made to Guido di Pietro in January and February 1418 for work at the church of Santo Stefano del Ponte in Florence indicate that he was already working as a painter.

By 1423, Angelico had joined the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole. Following the custom of adopting a new name upon entering a religious order, he adopted the name Fra Giovanni (Friar John). As a Dominican, he relied on alms and donations for his livelihood. Angelico initially trained as a manuscript illuminator and may have collaborated with his brother Benedetto, who also joined the Dominican Order. Some illuminated manuscripts have been attributed to him or his workshop, though these attributions remain debated. He may have been influenced by Lorenzo Monaco, though direct training is not documented, and influences from the Sienese school are evident in his work. Angelico trained with Master Varricho in Milan. According to Giorgio Vasari, Angelico's first major work was an altarpiece and a painted screen for the Charterhouse (Carthusian monastery) of Florence, though nothing remains of these today.

From 1408 to 1418, Angelico painted frescoes, many of which have now been lost, at the Dominican friary of Cortona as an assistant to Gherardo Starnina or one of his followers. By 1418, he had returned to Fiesole, where he painted a number of works for the monastery, including the Fiesole Altarpiece. A predella of the altarpiece depicting Christ in Glory alongside over 250 figures, including beatified Dominicans, is conserved in the National Gallery. Around 1427, Angelico produced an altarpiece depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, which remained at San Domenico until 1812 when artist and collector Vivant Denon acquired it for the Louvre. Angelico also produced a Madonna of Humility now kept in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Also completed at this time were an Annunciation and a Madonna of the Pomegranate, both of which are now in the Prado Museum.

San Marco, Florence, 1436–1445

In 1436, Angelico was one of a number of friars from Fiesole who moved to the newly built convent of San Marco in Florence. This move placed him at the heart of the artistic life of the region. During these years in Florence, he was certainly in contact with the three artistic circles in the city in the early 15th century: the school of miniaturists, the workshops of the last Giottesque students (followers of Giotto), and a group of young sculptors and architects destined for great fame: Jacopo della Quercia, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello.

Angelico soon attracted the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, one of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the city's governing authority, the Signoria, and the founder of the Medici Dynasty that was to dominate Florentine politics for much of the Renaissance. Cosimo had a cell reserved for himself at the convent as a retreat from the world. Vasari reports that Cosimo commissioned Angelico to decorate the convent with frescoes, which were greatly admired at the time. They include the magnificent fresco of the chapter house, the much-reproduced Annunciation at the top of the stairs leading to the cells, the Maestà (or Coronation of the Madonna) with Saints (cell 9), and many other smaller devotional frescoes in the cells depicting stories of the Nativity and Passion of Jesus.

In his early works, Angelico retained a Gothic style. In the small tabernacles of San Marco, however, the simplicity of his compositions and colours shows traces of the mature style that was to characterize his works. In his Deposition of Christ, produced for the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Trinita, he reached the full expression of this style. In this painting, the naturalistic spirit of the 15th century is affirmed by the lifelike figures, who possess a variety of expressions and gestures, as well as in the representation of a naturalistic landscape, which replaced the traditional gold ground typical of the Gothic period.

In 1439, Angelico completed one of his most famous and influential works: the San Marco Altarpiece. It created a new religious genre, sacra conversazione (sacred conversation), later used by artists including Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Perugino and Raphael. Although representations of the enthroned Madonna and Child surrounded by saints were common, they were depicted in a heaven-like setting, hovering as spiritual presences rather than with earthly substance. In the San Marco Altarpiece, the saints stand squarely within the space, grouped in a natural way as if conversing about their shared witness of the Virgin Mary.

The Vatican, 1445–1455

In 1445, Pope Eugene IV summoned Angelico to Rome to paint the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter's, later demolished by Pope Paul III. Vasari suggests that at this time Angelico was offered the Archbishopric of Florence by Pope Nicholas V, which he rejected, recommending another friar in his place. However, the story does not align with the historical facts. In 1445 the Pope was Eugene IV and Nicholas was not to be elected until two years later in March 1447. The archbishop in question during 1446–1459 was the Dominican Antoninus of Florence (Antonio Pierozzi), who was canonized by Pope Adrian VI in 1523.

In 1447, Angelico and his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, travelled to Orvieto to produce works for the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary. Among his other pupils was Zanobi Strozzi.

From 1447 to 1449, Angelico was again at the Vatican, designing the frescoes for the Niccoline Chapel for Nicholas V. The scenes from the lives of the two martyred deacons of the Early Christian Church, St. Stephen and St. Lawrence may have been executed wholly or in part by assistants. The small chapel, with its brightly frescoed walls and gold leaf decorations, gives the impression of a jewel box. From 1449 until 1452, Angelico returned to the convent in Fiesole, where he became Prior.

Death and beatification

Fra Angelico died in 1455 while staying at a Dominican convent in Rome, possibly on an order to work on Pope Nicholas' chapel. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome. Angelico was interred in a niche near the altar in a marble tomb. The tombstone is an effigy carved in relief depicting Angelico in a Dominican habit. Above the tomb are two epitaphs, probably by Lorenzo Valla. The first reads:

Give me not praise for being another Apelles,
But say, rather, that in the name of Christ, that I gave all I had to the poor.
The deeds that count on Earth are not the ones that count in Heaven.
That city which is the flower of Etruria bore me, Giovanni.

Below this is inscribed:

In this place is enshrined the glory, the mirror, and the ornament of painters, John the Florentine. A religious and a true servant of God, he was a brother of the holy Order of Saint Dominic. His disciples mourn the death of such a great master, for who will find another brush like his? His homeland and his order mourn the death of a distinguished painter, who had no equal in his art.

The English writer and critic William Michael Rossetti wrote of the friar:

From various accounts of Fra Angelico's life, it is possible to gain some sense of why he was deserving of canonization. He led the devout and ascetic life of a Dominican friar, and never rose above that rank; he followed the dictates of the order in caring for the poor; he was always good-humored. All of his many paintings were of divine subjects, and it seems that he never altered or retouched them, perhaps from a religious conviction that, because his paintings were divinely inspired, they should retain their original form. 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.

Pope John Paul II beatified Angelico on 3 October 1982 and in 1984 declared him patron of Catholic artists. John Paul II noted that:

Angelico was reported to say "He who does Christ's work must stay with Christ always". This motto earned him 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.

He is commemorated by the current Roman Martyrology on 18 February, the date of his death in 1455. There the Latin text reads Beatus Ioannes Faesulanus, cognomento Angelicus ("Blessed John of Fiesole, known as the Angelic").

Evaluation

Background

Angelico worked during a period of significant change in European artistic style, marked by the transition from the Medieval tradition to the Early Renaissance. This shift began in the fourteenth century with artists such as Giotto and Giusto de' Menabuoi. Both Angelico and de' Menabuoi produced major works in Padua, while Giotto had earlier trained in Florence under the Gothic painter Cimabue.

Giotto's fresco cycle depicting the life of Saint Francis at the Basilica of Santa Croce represented a departure from earlier conventions through its emphasis on naturalism, spatial coherence, and emotional expression. His approach influenced a number of later painters who adopted and expanded upon his techniques, such as the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti and their developments towards narrative clarity and realism.

Altarpieces

The works of Angelico combine elements of the late Gothic tradition with emerging Renaissance principles. In his Coronation of the Virgin, an altarpiece painted for the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, Angelico employed features typical of prestigious fourteenth-century altarpieces, including a finely worked gold ground and extensive use of azurite and vermilion pigments. The gilded haloes and gold-edged garments reflect the refined decorative conventions of Gothic painting.

The work also demonstrates characteristics associated with the Renaissance. In contrast to earlier Gothic examples, such as altarpieces by Gentile da Fabriano, Angelico's figures are rendered with greater solidity, three-dimensional form, and naturalism. The drapery of the garments follows the structure of the bodies beneath, and the figures convey a sense of physical weight, despite being depicted standing on clouds rather than on solid ground.

Frescoes

Angelico produced a series of frescoes for the cells of San Marco that built upon Masaccio's work. The dormitory of San Marco consists of three corridors with thirty-eight internal cells, each decorated by Angelico with frescoes depicting scenes from the life of Jesus in a loose narrative sequence.

The fresoes are the same shape as the arched window and vaulted ceiling of each cell. The decoration and style reflects the Dominican Rule's focus on charity, and the cells contain no other decorations to distract from the fresco scenes. Vasari explains that Angelico was inspired to create a large crucifixion scene with many saints for the chapter house after Cosimo de' Medici saw the frescoes. As with the other frescoes, de' Medici's patronage did not influence Angelico's artistic expression with displays of wealth.

Masaccio ventured into perspective with his creation of a realistically painted niche at Santa Maria Novella. Subsequently, Angelico demonstrated an understanding of linear perspective, particularly in his annunciation paintings set inside the sort of arcades that Michelozzo and Brunelleschi created at San Marco and the square in front of it.

Lives of the Saints

When Fra Angelico went to the Vatican to decorate the chapel of Pope Nicholas, he was again confronted with the need to please the very wealthiest of clients. The walls are decked with the brilliance of colour and gold that are found in the most lavish creations of the Gothic painter Simone Martini at the Lower Church of St Francis of Assisi, a hundred years earlier. Yet Angelico created designs that reveal his own preoccupation with humanity, humility, and piety. According to Vasari, "in their bearing and expression, the saints painted by Angelico come nearer to the truth than the figures done by any other artist."

It is probable that much of the actual painting was done by his assistants to his design. Benozzo Gozzoli was a highly accomplished painter but took his art further towards the fully developed Renaissance style with his expressive and lifelike portraits in his masterpiece depicting the Journey of the Magi, painted in the Medici's private chapel at their palazzo.

Artistic legacy

Through Fra Angelico's pupil Benozzo Gozzoli's portraiture and technical style in the art of fresco we see a link to Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was commissioned by the wealthy patrons of Florence, and through Ghirlandaio to his pupil Michelangelo and the High Renaissance.

When Michelangelo took up the Sistine Chapel commission, he was working within a space that had already been extensively decorated by other artists. Around the walls the Life of Christ and Life of Moses were depicted by a range of artists including his teacher Ghirlandaio, Raphael's teacher Perugino and Botticelli.

Within the cells of San Marco, Fra Angelico had demonstrated that painterly skill and the artist's personal interpretation were sufficient to create memorable works of art, without the expensive trappings of blue and gold. In the use of the unadorned fresco technique, the clear, bright colours, the careful arrangement of a few significant figures and the skillful use of expression, motion and gesture, Michelangelo showed himself to be the artistic descendant of Fra Angelico. Frederick Hartt describes Fra Angelico as "prophetic of the mysticism" of painters such as Rembrandt, El Greco and Zurbarán.

Vasari praised Fra Angelico: "it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety."

Works

Early works, 1408–1436

Unknown

• Saint James and Saint Lucy Predella, five panels, tempera, c. 1426 to 1428

Rome

• The Crucifixion, panel, c. 1420–1423, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Possibly Fra Angelico's only signed work.

Oxford, England

• The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Magdalen. early 1420s. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Purchased from a private collection in November 2024.

Cortona

• Annunciation, c. 1430, Diocesan Museum, Cortona

Fiesole

• Coronation of the Virgin, altarpiece with predellas of Miracles of St Dominic, Church of San Domenico, Louvre, Paris
• Virgin and Child between Saints Thomas Aquinas, Barnabas, Dominic and Peter Martyr, altarpiece, San Domenico, 1424
• Christ in Majesty, predella, National Gallery, London.

Florence: Basilica di San Marco

• Dormition of the Virgin, 1431

Florence: Santa Trinita

• Deposition of Christ, altarpiece, National Museum of San Marco, Florence.
• Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1432, Uffizi, Florence
• Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1434–1435, Louvre, Paris

Florence: Santa Maria degli Angeli

• Last Judgement, Accademia, Florence

Florence: Santa Maria Novella

• Coronation of the Virgin, altarpiece, Uffizi.

San Marco, Florence, 1436–1445

• Altarpiece for chancel – Virgin with Saints Cosmas and Damian, attended by Saints Dominic, Peter, Francis, Mark, John Evangelist and Stephen. Cosmas and Damian were patrons of the Medici. The altarpiece was commissioned in 1438 by Cosimo de' Medici. It was removed and disassembled during the renovation of the convent church in the seventeenth century. Two of the nine predella panels remain at the convent; seven are in Washington, Munich, Dublin and Paris. Two missing side panels depicting Dominican saints were found in the 2000s.

• Altarpiece? – Madonna and Child with Twelve Angels (life sized); Uffizi.
• Altarpiece – The Annunciation
• San Marco Altarpiece
• Two versions of the Crucifixion with St Dominic; in the Cloister
• Very large Crucifixion with Virgin and 20 Saints; in the Chapter House
• The Annunciation; at the top of the Dormitory stairs. This is probably the most reproduced of all Fra Angelico's paintings.
• Virgin Enthroned with Four Saints; in the Dormitory passage

Each cell is decorated with a fresco which matches in size and shape the single round-headed window beside it. The frescoes are apparently for contemplative purposes. Many of Fra Angelico's finest and most reproduced works are among them. There are, particularly in the inner row of cells, some of the less inspiring quality and of the more repetitive subject, perhaps completed by assistants. Many pictures include Dominican saints as witnesses of the scene each in one of the nine traditional prayer postures depicted in De Modo Orandi. The friar using the cell could place himself in the scene.

• The Adoration of the Magi
• The Transfiguration
• Noli me tangere
• The Three Marys at the Tomb.
• The Road to Emmaus, with two Dominicans as the disciples
• The Mocking of Christ
• There are many versions of the Crucifixion

Late works, 1445–1455

Orvieto Cathedral

Three segments of the ceiling in the Cappella Nuova, with the assistance of Benozzo Gozzoli.

• Christ in Glory
• The Virgin Mary
• The Apostles

Niccoline Chapel

The Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, at the Vatican, was probably painted with much assistance from Benozzo Gozzoli and Gentile da Fabriano. The entire surface of the wall and ceiling is sumptuously painted. There is much gold leaf for borders and decoration, and a great use of brilliant blue made from lapis lazuli.

• The Life of St Stephen
• The Life of St Lawrence
• The Four Evangelists.

Discovery of lost works

The San Marco Altarpiece had eight side panels. During Napoleon's Italian campaigns, they were dispersed, with the whereabouts of two remaining unknown for centuries. Around 2005, those two were discovered in Oxford in the home of Jean Preston, a curator of medieval manuscripts at the Huntington Library and Princeton University Library. Preston and her amateur collector father, Kerrison Preston, had purchased them in California in 1965 for around $200–400, where they were described as "panel paintings of Dominican Saints, 15th Century, Italian". The panels had been inherited by an American widow after her husband had died in Switzerland c. 1924–1925. Michael Liversidge, a former dean of art history at the University of Bristol, evaluated the panels at Preston's house, describing them as a "once in a lifetime" find. After her death in 2006, the collection in her estate was auctioned off by Duke's, an auction house in Dorset. In April 2007, Florentine antiquarian Fabrizio Moretti anonymously outbid the Italian ministry of art and culture to purchase the two panels for £1.7 million. Later that year, the Polo Museale Fiorentino and the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze each purchased one of them for a total of €3.6 million, subsequently entrusting them to San Marco Museum. In 2025, the altarpiece was temporarily displayed alongside 17 of the 18 total known predellas and panels at Palazzo Strozzi as part of the Beato Angelico exhibition.

See also

• List of Italian painters
• List of famous Italians
• Early Renaissance painting
• Poor Man's Bible
• Fray Angelico Chavez – Franciscan friar, historian and artist who was named after Fra Angelico due to his interest in painting
• Western painting

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Fra Angelico, Fra a famous painter of the Florentine school, born near Castello di Vicchio in the province of Mugello, Tuscany, 1387; died at Rome, 1455. He was christened Guido, and his father's name being Pietro he was known as Guido, or Guidolino, di Pietro, but his full appellation today is that of "Blessed Fra Angelico Giovanni da Fiesole". He and his supposed younger brother, Fra Benedetto da Fiesole, or da Mugello, joined the order of Preachers in 1407, entering the Dominican convent at Fiesole. Giovanni was twenty years old at the time the brothers began their art careers as illustrators of manuscripts, and Fra Benedetto, who had considerable talent as an illuminator and miniaturist, is supposed to have assisted his more celebrated brother in his famous frescoes in the convent of San Marco in Florence. Fra Benedetto was superior at San Dominico at Fiesole for some years before his death in 1448. Fra Angelico, who during a residence at Foligno had come under the influence of Giotto whose work at Assisi was within easy reach, soon graduated from the illumination of missals and choir books into a remarkably naïve and inspiring maker of religious paintings, who glorified the quaint naturalness of his types with a peculiarly pious mysticism. He was convinced that to picture Christ perfectly one must need be Christlike, and Vasari says that he prefaced his paintings by prayer. His technical equipment was somewhat slender, as was natural for an artist with his beginnings, his work being rather thin, dry, and hard. His spirit, however, glorified his paintings. His noble holy figures, his beautiful angels, human but in form, robed with the hues of the sunrise and sunset, and his supremely earnest saints and martyrs are permeated with the sincerest of religious feeling. His early training in miniature and illumination had its influence in his more important works, with their robes of golden embroidery, their decorative arrangements and details, and pure, brilliant colours. As for the early studies in art of Fra Angelico, nothing is known. His painting shows the influence of the Siennese school, and it is thought he may have studied under Gherardo, Starnina, or Lorenzo Monaco.

On account of the struggle for the pontifical throne between Gregory XII, Benedict XIII, and Alexander V, Fra Giovanni and his brother, being adherents of the first named, had in 1409 to leave Fiesole, taking refuge in the convent of their order established at Foligno in Umbria. The pest devastating that place in 1414, the brothers went to Cortona, where they spent four years and then returned to Fiesole. There Fra Angelico remained for sixteen years. He was then invited to Florence to decorate the new Convent of San Marco which had just been allotted to his order, and of which Cosmo de' Medici was a munificent patron. At Cortona are found some of his best pictures. It was at Florence, however, where he spent nine years, that he painted his most important works. In 1445, Pope Eugenius IV invited Fra Angelico to Rome and gave him work to do in the Vatican, where he painted for him and for his successor, Pope Nicholas V, the frescoes of two chapels. That of the cappella del Sacramento, in the Vatican, was destroyed later by Paul III. Eugenius IV than asked him to go to Orvieto to work in the chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio in the cathedral. This work he began in 1447, but did not finish, returning to Rome in the autumn of that year. Much later the chapel was finished by Luca Signorelli. Pope Eugenius is said to have offered the painter the place of Archbishop of Florence, which through modesty and devotion to his art he declined. At Rome, besides his great paintings in the chapels of the Vatican, he executed some beautiful miniatures for choral books. He is buried in Rome in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Among the thirty works of Fra Angelico in the cloisters and chapter house of the convent of San Marco in Florence (which has been converted into a national museum) is notable the famous "Crucifixion", with the Saviour between the two thieves surrounded by a group of twenty saints, and with bust portraits of seventeen Dominican fathers below. Here is shown to the full the mastery of the painter in depicting in the faces of the monks the emotions evoked by the contemplation of heavenly mysteries. In the Uffizi Gallery are "The Coronation of the Virgin", "The Virgin and Child with Saints", "Naming of John the Baptist", "The Preaching of St. Peter", "The Martyrdom of St. Mark", and "The Adoration of the Magi", while among the examples at the Florence Academy are "The Last Judgement", "Paradise", "The Deposition from the Cross", "The Entombment", scenes from the lives of St. Cosmas and St. Damian, and various subjects from the life of Christ. At Fiesole are a "Madonna and Saints" and a "Crucifixion". The predella in London is in five compartments and shows Christ with the Banner of the Resurrection surrounded by a choir of angels and a great throng of the blessed. There is also there an "Adoration of the Magi". At Cortona appear at the Convent of San Domenico the fresco "The Virgin and Child with four Evangelists" and the altar-piece "Virgin and Child with Saints", and at the baptistry an "Annunciation" with scenes from the life of the Virgin and a "Life of St. Dominic". In the Turin Gallery "Two Angels kneeling on Clouds", and at Rome, in the Corsini Palace, "The Ascension", "The Last Judgment", and "Pentecost". At the Louvre in Paris are "The Coronation of the Virgin", "The Crucifixion", and "The Martyrdom of St. Cosmas and St. Damian". Berlin has, at the Museum, a "Last Judgment", and Dublin, at the National Gallery, "The Martyrdom of St. Cosmas and St. Damian". At Madrid is "The Annunciation", in Munich "Scenes from the Lives of St. Cosmas and St. Damian", and in St. Petersburg a "Madonna and Saints". Mrs. John L. Gardner has in the art gallery of her Boston residence an "Assumption" and a "Dormition of the Virgin". There are other works at Parma, Perugia, and Pisa. At San Marco, Florence, in addition to the works already mentioned are "Madonna della Stella", "Coronation of the Virgin", "Adoration of the Magi", and "St. Peter Martyr". The Chapel of St. Nicholas in the Vatican at Rome contains frescoes of the "Lives of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen", "The Four Evangelists", and "The Teachers of the Church". In the gallery of the Vatican are "St. Nicholas of Bari", and "Madonna and Angels". The work at Orvieto finished by Signorelli shows Christ in "a glory of angels with sixteen saints and prophets".

Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers; Edgecombe-Haley, Fra Angelico.

External links

• Fra Angelico – Painter of the Early Renaissance
• Fra Angelico in the "History of Art" Archived 25 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine
• Ross Finocchio, Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Fra Angelico Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (26 October 2005 – 29 January 2006).
• "Soul Eyes" Archived 3 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine Review of the Fra Angelico show at the Met, by Arthur C. Danto in The Nation, (19 January 2006).
• Fra Angelico, Catherine Mary Phillimore, (Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1892)
• Frescoes and paintings gallery Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
• Italian Paintings: Florentine School, a collection catalogue containing information about the artist and his works (see pages 77–82).
• "From September 26, 2025, to January 25, 2026, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco present Fra Angelico...."

Further reading

• Nathaniel Silver (ed.), Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston 2018
• Gerardo de Simone, Il Beato Angelico a Roma. Rinascita delle arti e Umanesimo cristiano nell'Urbe di Niccolò V e Leon Battista Alberti, Fondazione Carlo Marchi, Studi, vol. 34, Olschki, Firenze 2017
• Cyril Gerbron, Fra Angelico. Liturgie et mémoire (= Études Renaissantes, 18), Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2016. ISBN 978-2-503-56769-3;
• Gerardo de Simone, "La bottega di un frate pittore: il Beato Angelico tra Fiesole, Firenze e Roma", in Revista Diálogos Mediterrânicos, n. 8, Curitiba (Brasil) 2015, ISSN 2237-6585, pp. 48–85 – http://www.dialogosmediterranicos.com.br/index.php/RevistaDM
• Gerardo de Simone, "Fra Angelico: perspectives de recherche, passées et futures", in Perspective, la revue de l'INHA. Actualités de la recherche en histoire de l'art, 1/2013, pp. 25–42
• Gerardo de Simone, "Velut alter Iottus. Il Beato Angelico e i suoi 'profeti trecenteschi'", in 1492. Rivista della Fondazione Piero della Francesca, 2, 2009 (2010), pp. 41–66
• Gerardo de Simone, "L'Angelico di Pisa. Ricerche e ipotesi intorno al Redentore benedicente del Museo Nazionale di San Matteo", in Polittico, Edizioni Plus – Pisa University Press, 5, Pisa 2008, pp. 5–35
• Gerardo de Simone, "L'ultimo Angelico. Le "Meditationes" del cardinal Torquemada e il ciclo perduto nel chiostro di S. Maria sopra Minerva", in Ricerche di Storia dell'Arte, Carocci Editore, Roma 2002, pp. 41–87
• Creighton Gilbert, How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World, Penn State Press, 2002 ISBN 0-271-02140-3
• John T. Spike, Angelico, New York 1997.
• Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico: Dissemblance and Figuration. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995. ISBN 0-226-14813-0 Discussion of how Fra Angelico challenged Renaissance naturalism and developed a technique to portray "unfigurable" theological ideas.
• J. B. Supino, Fra Angelico, Alinari Brothers, Florence, undated, from Project Gutenberg
• Povoledo, Elisabetta, "Reuniting the Great Works of the Patron Saint of Artists: A new exhibition in Italy puts the spotlight on Fra Angelico, whose reputation for piety vied with his undeniable artistic talents." The New York Times, 22 September 2025. Article about Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco exhibit.
• Farago, Jason, "Fra Angelico and the Miracle of Faith Made Visible" The New York Times, 8 October 2025. Review of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco exhibit.
• Rowland, Ingrid D. "Painted Sermons" New York Review of Books, 26 February 2026. Review of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco exhibit and its catalogue.
• Silver, Nathaniel, "Angels' delight" Apollo, January 2026, p. 87. Review of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco exhibit.

Bibliography

• Hood, William. Fra Angelico at San Marco. Yale University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-300-05734-8
• Morachiello, Paolo. Fra Angelico: The San Marco Frescoes. Thames and Hudson, 1990. ISBN 0-500-23729-8
• Frederick Hartt. A History of Italian Renaissance Art, Thames & Hudson, 1970. ISBN 0-500-23136-2
• Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Artists. first published 1568. Penguin Classics, 1965.
• Donald Attwater. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. Penguin Reference Books, 1965.
• Luciano Berti. Florence, the city and its Art. Bercocci, 1979.
• Werner Cohn. Il Beato Angelico e Battista di Biagio Sanguigni. Revista d'Arte, V, (1955): 207–221.
• Stefano Orlandi. Beato Angelico; Monographia Storica della Vita e delle Opere con Un'Appendice di Nuovi Documenti Inediti. Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1964.