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Guido di Pietro (Fra Angelico) was a singular figure of the early Renaissance. He is a great representative of Florentine religious painting. He was born in Vicchio di Mugello, Florence, in 1395, and died in Rome, hailed with glory, in 1455.
Guido di Pietro moved to Florence with his brother Benedetto, both entering the manuscript workshop of the parish of San Miguel Visdomini.
Benedetto trained as a copyist and Guido as an illuminator, which explains their mastery of small-format works. In 1423 he had already professed as a Dominican in the convent of Saint Dominic in Fiesole and taken the name Fra Giovanni da Fiesole.
The name of Fra Angelico, as it has gone down in history, appears for the first time 14 years after his death in reference to his profound spirituality, widely highlighted by his first biographer, Antonio Manetti.
Between 1420 and 1432, Fra Angelico combined illumination (Museo di San Marco, Florence) with altar works for Saint Dominic, applying to these the preciousness and delicacy of the miniature, as seen in The Annunciation (Prado Museum) or The Coronation of the Virgin (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Giorgio Vassari, great art historian, speaks this way about Fra Angelico:
“It would have been easy for him to lead a pleasant life in the world: fortune was not lacking and his precocious talent could have quickly placed him in a position to satisfy his desires, but his pious and humble soul preferred to retire to the shadow of the cloister and entered the world. Order of Saint Dominic.
Just as Saint Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of theologians, this painter was called Blessed Angelico and became the patron saint of artists. In 1985, Pope John Paul II authorized his worship.
Her convent was in Fiésole, working in a strange peace in the neat silence of cypresses and clean blues of the convent garden. It is said that he never took up the brushes without first saying a prayer.
Michelangelo said: “It must be recognized that this good monk visited paradise and that there he was allowed to choose his models.”
In 1435 he moved to the convent of San Marcos. His first work was destined for the charterhouse of Florence. Landscapes of Fiésole and the Arno appear in the city of the fleur-de-lis, as Florence is called.
In turbulent times, Fra Angelico painted innocence, invented candor in his transparent and illuminated blues and golds. It was an ideal universe, a paradisiacal and orderly cosmos bathed in celestial light.
He was called to Rome by Pope Nicholas V to paint The Descent from the Cross in the private chapel of his palace and also to illuminate books. The Pope wanted to name him archbishop of Florence but Fra Angelico gave up and offered his position to a friend. The last year of his life was spent in Rome at the Minerva convent where he died. He is buried in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. He influenced his painting on Domenico Veneziano and on Piero Della Francesca.
The Annunciation (in Italian, Annunciazione) is an altarpiece in gold and tempera on panel, which was painted around 1425-1426 for the church of the convent of Santo Domingo in Fiesole (Italy).
It consists of a main scene, with the theme of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, and a predella or bench with five more small scenes. The set measures 194 cm wide and 194 cm high. It is currently exhibited in the Prado Museum.
Sold by the friars to Mario Farnese in 1611 to defray the costs of building the church’s bell tower, shortly after this Italian prince sent it as a gift to King Philip III’s valet, Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma.
Although the altarpiece was deposited in the Dominican church in Valladolid, the convent temple of San Pablo pantheon of the Casa de Lerma, shortly after it was sent to the Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid. It was kept there until the mid-19th century.
It was precisely in its upper cloister that the painter Federico Madrazo, at the time director of the Prado Museum, would discover it, who managed to get the king consort Don Francisco de Asís to be interested in its transfer to the Prado, with the consent of the prioress of the monastery, who in return received another Annunciation painted by Madrazo himself. Sent to the museum as a royal donation on July 16, 1861, since that moment it has become one of its most relevant and well-known pieces.
It develops in the main scene the theme of the Annunciation, as it appears narrated in the New Testament, showing the scene in an open marble portico, all’aperto, reminiscent of the Hospital of the Innocents in Florence with semicircular arches that rest on thin white columns.
It has groin vaults, a light blue color dotted with small gold stars. On the façade of the portico there is a medallion with the figure of God the Father in grisaille. At the back of the porch there is a cubicle with a bench.
The portico is made of marble, the Virgin is located on the right. It seems that before the arrival of the angel she has stopped reading the book that she now keeps on her lap. Both she and the figure of the angel are two blonde characters, with white skin and thin, elongated hands. The Virgin wears a pink tunic and an ultramarine blue mantle. The angel is dressed in a pink dress with gold stripes, cinched at the waist, which falls in large folds to the feet.
It is located in a garden, hortus conclusus, representation of paradise. In the left corner of the painting you can see the hands of God and from them comes a ray of golden light that comes straight to the right, in which the dove of the Holy Spirit travels. The garden in front of the porch is full of little flowers and has thick vegetation with some trees among which you can see two characters: Adam and Eve, in this case dressed in skins. His expression is one of submission and regret. It represents together the scene, the beginning and the end of sin, the first parents and the salvation of Mary’s son. An angel watches behind them as they leave paradise.
The painting is completed with a predella in which other scenes from the life of the Virgin are narrated. The predella is made up of five panels where the episodes are represented chronologically: Birth and Betrothal, Visitation, Adoration of the Magi, Presentation in the Temple and Transit.
It is a work made around the year 1425, that is, at a time of transition between Gothic painting and the Renaissance. Traits such as the meticulousness of the miniature remain from the medieval period, as can be seen in the flora in front of Adam and Eve, in the angel’s wings or in its golden halo. The light and color are already Renaissance, as well as the austerity of the architecture.
