The Age of Renaissance 1420-1600
The Annunciation c. 1420
Prado, Madrid, Spain
Fra Angelico was one of a select band of Renaissance artists who combined the monastic life with a career as a professional painter. Little is know about his early years, apart from the fact that he was born at Vicchio, near Florence, and that his real name was Guido di Pietro. He became a Dominican Friac c. 1418-1421, entering the monastery of San Domenico in Fiesole. For the remainder of his life, he placed hid art at the service of he faith, earning the nickmane`Angelic`, by which he has become know to posterity.
Angelico’s earliest surviving works are small-scale and betray an astonishing eye for detail, suggesting that he may have begun his career as a manuscript illuminator. They also display the influence of the international Gothic style, which was starting to fall out of fashion. The painter-monk learned quickly, however, absorbing Tommaso Masaccio’s revolutionary ideas about the organization of space and perspective. He also tackled the most prestigious form of religious art, frescoe painting. In this field, Angelico’s greatest achievement was a magnificent cycle of frescoes at the newly restored monastery of San Marco in Florence (c. 1438-1445)
Fra Angelico: Born c. 1400. Died: 1455
