Beato Angelico

In his biography of the Dominican friar and painter of sacred images Fra Angelico, Giorgio Vasari attributes to the fi fteenth-century Florentine master an extraordinary assertion: Angelico, he claims, said that "anyone who does this kind of art needs quiet and a life free of care; anyone who does the things of Christ must remain with Christ always". The present book takes these words as its point of departure, looking at Angelico's art in the perspective of his life.
There is, indeed, no other way, as the artist's canonization by Pope John Paul II suggests. For, in the absence of detailed information from contemporary sources, and of the miracles normally requested for canonization, the Church accepted Angelico's painted oeuvre as "proof" of his holiness. The volume thus opens with a study on Angelico as a mystic, in which several of his works are analysed from the point of view of iconography and interpretation. A second chapter considers the saintly man as a professional artist in the historical and cultural context of early Quattrocento Florence, while the following sections reconstruct Angelico's stylistic evolution, from the 1420s through his frescoes at San Marco, his chapel for Pope Nicholas V, his Annunciations, eventually attempting a closing summary of the artist's production.