National Gallery of Art Attempted Martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian

The first American retrospective devoted to the work of the neat Italian Renaissance creative person known as Fra Angelico (1390/5-1455) – and the outset comprehensive presentation of his work assembled anywhere in the world in one-half a century – opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Oct 26. More than 50 public institutions and individual collections in Europe and America will participate in the landmark exhibition, which commemorates the 550th anniversary of the artist's expiry. Fra Angelico volition characteristic nearly 75 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations from throughout his career, supplemented past 45 additional works by his assistants and closest followers. Highlights of the exhibition include recently discovered paintings and new attributions, paintings never before displayed publicly, and reconstructed groupings of works, some of them reunited for the first time.

"The subtlety and technical sophistication of Fra Angelico'due south mind and hand are amidst the characteristics that set him apart from other artists of the Italian Renaissance," commented Philippe de Montebello, Manager of the Metropolitan Museum. "The exhibition Fra Angelico illustrates the artist's endlessly fertile imagination and incomparable adroitness, every bit well as the reach and continuity of his influence into the second one-half of the 15th century."

Biography of the Artist

Born in the countryside north of Florence, Guido di Pietro was already an established creative person when he joined the Dominican order sometime between 1419 and 1422, taking for himself the name Fra Giovanni. He received commissions for important altarpieces from his own monastery San Domenico in Fiesole, from other Dominican houses in Florence, Cortona, and Perugia, and from religious institutions as far away equally Brescia in the north of Italia and Orvieto and Rome to the south. His prominence every bit an artist was challenged in Florence simply by the brief and meteoric career of Masaccio (1401-1428), many of whose innovations Angelico anticipated in his ain, nonetheless little-understood early on works. By the time Masaccio left Florence for Rome in 1427, Angelico was indisputably the leading painter in Tuscany, a position he maintained for about xxx years, eclipsing the reputations of such gifted artists as Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), Domenico Veneziano (about 1410-1461), and even the young Piero della Francesca (about 1406/12-1492).

Known for his pious treatment of religious subjects – which he portrayed with unprecedented psychological penetration and a compelling realism – Fra Giovanni was first called "pictor angelicus," the Celestial Painter, shortly after his death in 1455, a name that came to exist rendered in English equally Fra Angelico. In 1984, Fra Angelico was beatified – the beginning pace in the process toward sainthood – by Pope John Paul II, who also decreed him the patron of artists.

Exhibition Overview

Much of Angelico'due south enduring popularity rests on his frescoes – peculiarly those painted in the dormitory cells at the convent of San Marco in Florence – and on altarpieces likewise large to be safely transported. Instead, the exhibition will bring together a nearly complete selection of his works of smaller scale, presenting the entire range of the development of his genius over the full course of his career. Even in his most intimate creations – illuminated initials in liturgical manuscripts – Fra Angelico remained a monumental artist, conceiving narrative, drama, and human form with a grandeur that belied their physical format. His predella panels (the modest painted scenes below large altarpieces) are amongst the most forward-looking and innovative works produced in 15th-century Florence, while his images of the Virgin and Child all the same retain their inspirational immediacy and presence, equally well as their hit dazzler.

The exhibition was arranged chronologically and by attribution. The first decade of Fra Angelico's career, until about 1422, was explored in a group of 17 paintings and drawings, which ranged from ii recently discovered panels that may exist his start efforts as an independent artist to his high altarpiece deputed for the newly founded convent of San Domenico in Fiesole. 30-iv additional works on console, paper, and parchment chronicled his ascension to prominence in Florence over the side by side x years and his development of a distinctive personal style that paved the fashion for many of the accomplishments of afterwards Renaissance painters in Tuscany. Main among these were the panels of a monumental tabernacle triptych now divided amid museums in Munich, London, and Parma; the only 2 surviving contained drawings by Angelico's paw; and ten of the 11 known panels from a reconstructed altarpiece painted for the Da Filicaia family chapel in the church of Santa Croce. The survey of the creative person'southward career concluded with 24 of the finest paintings from the period of his full maturity, including nine fragments from the high altarpiece painted virtually 1440 for the convent church of San Marco and his terminal known shorthand work, a Crucifixion painted for the Castilian Cardinal, Juan de Torquemada, now in the Fogg Art Museum.

The second one-half of the exhibition was dedicated to five of Angelico's administration and followers, each of whom was introduced in the catalogue past a monographic essay and in the exhibition by a representative selection of works.

Five paintings by Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, Angelico's kickoff documented colleague, included two panels from the altarpiece dated 1419, which formerly served as the artist's name-piece (Master of 1419) and three other paintings not previously recognized as his.

Zanobi Strozzi, who worked alongside Angelico intermittently for virtually 20 years, was represented by 22 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations culled from every decade of his career. Some of these are new attributions also; and several are executed in collaboration with other artists, including Fra Angelico himself.

Two of the uncommonly rare works by the Master of the Sherman Predella were included, forth with a curatorial conjecture for that artist's identification.

5 paintings past Francesco Pesellino – perhaps the most influential artist active in Florence at mid-century – commemorated his stylistic debt to Angelico and his cursory partnership with Zanobi Strozzi prior to his emergence equally an independent master.

The presence of Benozzo Gozzoli in Fra Angelico'due south shop was investigated through collaborative works and a pick of paintings from his later career, illustrating the continuity of this tradition nearly to the stop of the 15th century.

Catalogue

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by the Metropolitan Museum and distributed by Yale University Pres.

From a review in the NY Times:

National Gallery, London
"eighteen Blessed of the Dominican Club."

National Gallery of Fine art
"Attempted Martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian."

Graphische Sammlung, Albertina
"Christ on the Cross," pen and brown ink, with red launder, on newspaper.

Vatican Museums, Vatican Metropolis
"The Stigmatization of Saint Francis," from the Vatican Museums

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From another review:

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1390/95-1455)
The Nativity, ca. 1429-30
Tempera and gold on panel
11 3/8 x 7 7/16 in.
Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì, Italy
© Nazario Spadoni, Forlì

Presumably part of a portable altarpiece, Fra Angelico's Nativity (ca. 1429-30) is an unusual nocturnal study of the infant Jesus' nascency. The artist painted the manger, wherein the Holy Family unit resides and surmounted past nine haloed angels, at a precipitous angle to the movie plane. In the foreground are: Saint Joseph, artillery reverentially crossed; the glistening Christ Kid; and the diminutive Virgin Mary, easily pressed against each other in a prayerful opinion. Fra Angelico's depiction of the Madonna bears a sharp resemblance to others taken from illuminated manuscripts of the times. Behind her are a beneficial mule and ox in seated postures. The complacent animals and the manger'southward increasingly nighttime background advise depth...

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1390/95-1455)
The Virgin of Humility, ca. 1436-38
Tempera on panel
29 1/8 x 24 in.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Fra Angelico'southward Virgin of Humility (ca. 1436-38) from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam dates to the creative person's period of creative maturity. In a radical and innovative divergence from the accepted canon of artistic symbols during the Italian Renaissance, the friar's Madonna holds a strong sprig of lily (a Christian symbol of the Virgin Mary) in her right hand, normally reserved for interpretations of the Annunciation. Seated on a throne covered past a gilded fabric with intricate designs, Fra Angelico painted the Virgin Mary with the sweeping folds of her monumental deep blue cloak. The Virgin Mother holds the infant Jesus in her left arm; the Christ Kid gestures gently to grasp his mother in an endearing expression of sensitivity and humanity.

Truly the virtually absorbing painting in the exhibition, and mayhap in all of Fra Angelico's career, is his Christ Crowned with Thorns (ca. 1438-39) from Livorno, Italy. A radical deviation from his beatific angels and inspired scenes of the Nativity, this brilliant introspective tempera and gold on panel masterpiece has been the subject field of much scholarly argue, due to its stylistic analogousness with an early Netherlandish painting of the same subject by Jan van Eyck (act. 1422; d. 1441). Fra Angelico's confrontational composition is a visually disturbing bust-length portrait of Christ having been crowned with thorns while alive and earlier his imminent crucifixion. Traces of claret realistically trail over Christ'south savaged face. His eyes reddened by agony and set deeply within the Savior's head, this iconic paradigm is prophetic. The gilded neckband effectually Christ's neck identifies him equally the King of Kings in Latin, words from the Volume of the Apocalypse inscribed on the rim of Jesus' drapery