Fra Angelico
A sumptuous new monograph of the celebrated early Renaissance artist.
Diane Cole Ahl
- Fra Angelico (c.1390/95–1455) was the most celebrated religious painter of the early Italian Renaissance
- Surveys Fra Angelico's entire career, from its little-known beginnings as a lay painter, through his work at San Marco in Florence after taking holy orders as a Dominican, to his prestigious commissions at the Vatican and Orvieto Cathedral
- Reproduces all Fra Angelico's greatest works, including glorious altarpieces, serene frescos and magnificent ceilings
- Each edition is elegantly bound in a richly coloured silk that evokes the look and feel of classic Phaidon fine art volumes and enhances the luxurious quality of the books
Hardback
250 x 290 mm, 9 7/8 x 11 3/8 in
240 pp
150 colour illustrations
25 black and white illustrations
ISBN 9780714848303
0714848301
Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (c. 1390/95–1455), known as Fra Angelico, was among the most celebrated religious painters of the Italian Early Renaissance. Adhering to the austere life of a Dominican friar despite his huge success, Fra Angelico was admired for his devotion. As his contemporary biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote ‘it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.’
Originally trained as an illuminator, Fra Angelico went on to paint altarpieces that even early on in his career showed great skill in the rendering of the figures, composition and use of colour. His most famous works are the astonishing frescos that decorate the cells, corridors and Chapter House of San Marco convent in Florence, to where Fra Angelico moved in 1436. A magnificent altarpiece was also among the commissions for the newly built monastery, which showed an unprecedented realism in the intimate arrangement of the holy figures.
Diane Cole Ahl’s engaging text is combined with almost 200 images to create a book that is both informative and visually stunning. The works are discussed in detail, in the context of the time and places in which they were created, and Fra Angelico’s influence, both directly on his pupils such as Benozzo Gozzoli, and more wide-ranging on the artists that followed in the later Renaissance, is also examined. The original viewpoints of the author and the hitherto unpublished artwork of a reconstructed predella and altarpiece ensure that Fra Angelico will appeal to the specialised reader as well as students and those with an interest in art history.
Diane Cole Ahl is the Arthur J '55 and Barbara S. Rothkopf Professor of Art History at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD from the University of Virginia and BA from Sarah Lawrence College, New York, and has received many grants and awards for teaching and scholarship. She is the author of Benozzo Gozzoli and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Masaccio.