Angels-ANGELICO, FRA

The Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni da Fiesole, better known as
Fra Angelico, was born in 1387 as Guido di Pietro near the castle of
Vicchio in the upper valley of the Mugello, not far from Florence. In
1407 he and his brother presented themselves at the Dominican convent
of the Observance at Fiesole, and after a year’s novitiate at Cortona
he took the cowl under the name of Fra Giovanni. Angelico was
the name bestowed on Fra Giovanni by his fellow monks.
Because they remained loyal to the Roman Pope Gregory XII in a
period of schism and dissension during which Florence shifted its allegiance
to the antipope Alexander V, the Dominican monks were
expelled from Fiesole by the Florentine government. They took refuge at Foligno and Cortona, but eventually returned to their monastery at
Fiesole in 1418, after the Council of Constance. During the years of
exile, Fra Giovanni served his apprenticeship as an illuminator and
fresco painter, although his contacts with Florentine artistic life did
not begin until 1418.
In 1436 the Observant monks left Fiesole for the convent of San
Marco at Florence, where Fra Giovanni was asked to paint two pictures
for the convent church and to decorate the chapter house, refectory,
hospice, cloisters, and cells with frescoes. He was later called to
Rome to decorate the chapel of Nicholas V at the Vatican, which
kept him busy until 1449, when he was appointed prior of the convent
of San Marco, which office he held for three years. He died in Rome
in 1455 at the age of sixty-eight.
Fra Angelico portrayed angels as unearthly beings, creatures
unlike any human. While wonderfully celestial, Angelico’s angels are
also decidedly feminine. He adhered to this mode of representation in
spite of the strongly held contemporaneous belief that angels were
sexless. Two exquisite examples can be found in his depiction of
angels in the Linainuoli Altarpiece, in Florence, and in the Angel of
the Annunciation.
The eponymous St. Michael, an exquisite small picture now in the
Academy at Florence, is brilliantly celestial. The lance and shield and
the lambent flame above Michael’s brow are the only emblems, the
flame symbolizing spiritual fervor. The rainbow-tinted wings are raised
and fully spread, meeting above and behind the head. The armor is of
a rich dark red and gold. The pose and the countenance indicate the
reserved power and the godlike tranquility of the heavenly warrior and
mark him as the patron of the Church Militant.
Fra Angelico’s Annunciation conveys reverence and simplicity.
This fresco on the wall of the corridor in the convent of San Marco is
considered one of the most beautiful and spiritual Annunciations in
existence. Its sweetness and charm have given it a universal appeal,
which is reminiscent of its creator. Mary is innocence incarnate sitting
in a portico flanked by a flower-carpeted garden, which is symbolic of
her virginity. Fra Angelico has pictured Mary (who slightly leans
toward her heavenly visitor) and Gabriel in such a way that the two
seem equal in purity and goodness, giving the impression that Gabriel
is superior only in her knowledge of the impending birth. The angel is
decidedly feminine with rainbow-tinted wings and gently crossed
hands sans the often depicted lily or scepter.
In the Annunciation in the Museo del Gesù, Cortona, the two
main figures are framed. Mary’s mantle, as it flows down her back,echoes the foreshortened arches, while the angel, who is a bundle of
curves, echoes the frontal arches. The result is that the angel,
glimpsed at the very moment of alighting, betrays no movement at all,
while every line in the Virgin’s figure is galvanized as she starts from
her absorption in the prayer book on her knee.
Adoring angels abound in Fra Angelico’s Last Judgment. The trumpet
angels are placed below the Judge, indicating that they can be heard
in all the earth, whereas the angels who announce the fate of all who
are judged direct the blessed and the damned to their respective places.
Fra Angelico’s Coronation, in the Louvre, shows the Virgin kneeling
to be crowned, accompanied by a group of musical angels on each
side. The painting is characterized by a deliberate trick of perspective:
the divergent angles from which the scene is viewed are calculated to
heighten the illusion of distance between the choir of angels and
saints, on the one hand, and Christ and the Virgin, on the other.
Never have angels been more angelic than the ones portrayed in
Fra Angelico’s St. Dominic, also in the Louvre, in which a group of the
saint’s brethren are seated at table in the white habit and black mantilla
of their order. They are served by two, winged angels magnificently
robed in rich blue and gold and adorned with little gold halos, who
gently bring food to the friars’ table with simple dignity, as if in imitation
of the humility of Christ.