Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar who painted, and the two facts are not separable. The frescoes at San Marco in Florence were made for the friars’ own cells, one image per room, meant to be looked at during prayer rather than admired by visitors.

They are correspondingly plain. Pale walls, limited props, figures standing in shallow space. The Annunciation on the dormitory stairs uses almost nothing: an arcade, two figures, an empty garden.

The altarpieces made for public churches are another matter, full of gold, expensive ultramarine and crowded processions. He worked at the point where late Gothic decoration met the new Renaissance interest in perspective and used both without apparent conflict. Vasari reported that he wept while painting the Crucifixion.