Life and createvity of Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico is one of the famous representatives of the First Florentine School of Physics, which was formed in the first half of the Quattrocento (XV century). He is contemporaries of Mazzaco, but decisive for his creative attitude is the influence of Giotto and the impact of the traditional Gothic. His adventures are saturated with a high spirituality, and his style reflects the profound shocks in Italian painting, which he is going through at the beginning of the Renaissance. His contemporaries honored him as one of the most significant artists of their era, whose main contributions are his paintings seen as true illustrations of the Holy Gospel. This Dominican monk devotes himself entirely to painting to perform the orders of various monastic brotherhoods or church trustees. His thought is obsessed with the spiritual insights of medieval theologians, but he uses the ideas of the past to create an original poetics influenced by the research of human nature offered by the first Italian humanists. Still, his work is perceived above all as an artistic expression of his unshakable faith. On his elegant medieval classicism, the new artistic achievements of Early Renaissance Italian painting build on: the accuracy of the painting, the beauty of the color, and the mastered perspective.

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Giorgio Vasari, the first historiographer of Italian Renaissance art, had the birth of Guido / Guidolino /, who fell as Fra Angelico in 1387 and claimed that he had left the earthly world in 1455. The birth date proposed by Vasari is not confirmed by any document and raises doubts about the later explorers of the artist's life and creativity. Today, it is assumed that Fra Angelico was born in the 1400-1402 year period in the town of Vicenza di Mujello near Florence. The first documentary evidence suggests that the young man has devoted himself to painting as early as 1417 when he has not yet accepted the monastic cassock. There is no accurate account of his preparation as an artist. It is supposed that at the beginning Guido has painted miniatures. Some art historians admit that he studied at the last representative of the Gothic School of Florentine painting, Lorenzo Monaco, who, as his name implies, was also a monk. Indeed many Fra Angelique's paintings indicate the closeness of his drawing to the art of miniature - mostly patterning faces and clustering of characters on a azure background known as "angelic blue." They attribute to him the decoration of a prayer that was made around 1430, and they admit that he also illustrated other liturgical books. Somewhere between 1420 and 1422, Guido hopes for the cassock and goes to the Dominican Monastery of San Domenico of Fiesole, which is part of the newly formed congregation, which requires the observance of the primordial severity of the cult. It was then that Guido accepted the monastic name "Brother Giovanni of Fiesole" and devoted himself to the deeper religious knowledge he received under the strict supervision of Abbot Antonin, a Dominican theologian was celebrated in the 15th century.

Fra Angelico 's religious education continued probably until 1425-1429, the period of his first creative work as a painter. He then painted many church altars: the altar of the church in Fiesole (1428) and screamed about the martyrdom of St. Peter (1429). They still show the influence of the Gothic painting style that the young artist has probably learned in Lorenzo Monaco's atelier. A remarkable evolution in the style of Fra Angelico is observed in his next works: The Salad Handler for the Lambs Processors (ordered in 1433) and the series of scenes for the lower part of the Altar of St. Peter's Sermon, Martyrdom of St. Mark. Under the influence of his eminent contemporary Masacho, the artist from Fiesole becomes very sensitive to the suggestions coming from nature. It is said that he is the creator of the first landscape in Early Renaissance Italian painting, made for the altar in Cortone / 1433-1434 / - Lake Trasimeno. At the same time, FFra Angelico painted a Relief from the Cross for the Holy Trinity church, which is situated against the background of hills and castles illuminated by crystal clear light. In making the Virgin Mary's Coronation (known as the Louvre altar), the artist introduces new plastic suggestions: heavy curtains of fabric and haloes of darkened gold. In his composition The Complaint of Christ (1436) there is a return to the way of Giotto. A return to medieval pictorial poetics is observed in the decoration of the monastery of San Marco / Florence /, made by the artist during the same period.