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Fra
Angelico, as he is known in English, is il Beato Angelico in Italian and was known to his contemporaries as
Fra Giovanni da Fiesole. By the time Vasari published his "Lives of the
Artists" in 1555, Fra Angelico was already known as Fra Giovanni Angelico (Brother
John, the Angelic
One). He was born Guido di Pietro, at Rupecanina, in
Vicchio di
Mugello, near Fiesole,
some time around 1395 and died in Rome in 1455. The appellation "Beato" was a
measure of the esteem in which his painting was held and not a reference to his
beatification, which took place only in 1984.
Fra Angelico was a
Dominican and a mendicant, so, not being part of a closed
order, he was free to meet and talk to others in the Florence. He initially
trained as an illuminator and in 1420-1422,
he entered the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole with his brother Benedetto. It
was here that he produced his first known paintings: the Altarpiece
of the Annunciation, The
Coronation of the Virgin, as well as the frescoes for his monastery.
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Fra Angelico not only gained recognition as a painter but was held in high
regard in his convent because he was appointed Vicario for the first
time in Fiesole from 1432-33, a post he was to hold frequently in later years.
From 1408 to 1418 Fra Angelico was at the Dominican Convent of Cortona where he painted frescoes, now destroyed, in the Dominican Church.
In the 1430’s, he worked in Florentine churches, also carrying out commissions for the Dominicans in Cortona,
including the Cortona Triptych and
the Annunciation panel. From 1438, he worked on his most important commission,
the San
Marco Altarpiece and the frescoes for the convent of San Marco in
Florence.
In July 1445, Fra Angelico was summoned to Rome by Pope Eugenius IV, where he
painted frescoes in the chapel of Santissimo Sacramento, which was later torn
down under Pope Paul III. For Pope Nicholas V, the successor of Eugenius, he painted
the frescoes of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence between 1447 and 1449 with the
assistance of Benozzo Gazzoli (1420-1497), in the Capella Niccolina in the
Vatican, so named after the Pope who commissioned the frescoes.
In the summer of 1447, he began work on the frescoes in the Capella di San
Brizio in the Cathedral
of Orvieto. These were competed by
Luca
Signorelli fifty years later. From 1450-1452, he returned to his old convent
in Fiesole as Prior, before going for one last time to Rome, where he died on 18
February 1455. He is buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva.