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There is beautiful painting in the heads of the angels, at the foot of the Cross, but the brilliancy of the gold ground is overpowering to the colours, albeit he has balanced it by reproducing Cosimo Roselli's red-winged cherubs. Nothing but Fra Angelico's delicate tints can bear such a background.
A folio series of engravings from these paintings was published in Florence, in 1852. Along with Gozzoli already mentioned, Zanobi Strozzi and Gentile da Fabriano are named as pupils of the Beato. We have spoken of Angelico's art as "pietistic"; this is in fact its predominant character.
All Florentine work of the finest kind Luca della Robbia's, Ghiberti's, Donatello's, Filippo Lippi's, Botticelli's, Fra Angelico's is absolutely pure Etruscan, merely changing its subjects, and representing the Virgin instead of Athena, and Christ instead of Jupiter.
Andrea del Castagno "The Last Supper" The stolen Madonna Fra Angelico's frescoes "Little Antony" The good archbishop The Buonuomini Savonarola The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent Pope Alexander VI The Ordeal by Fire The execution The S. Marco cells The cloister frescoes Ghirlandaio's "Last Supper" Relics of old Florence Pico and Politian Piero di Cosimo Andrea del Sarto.
And so at last we went down into the dust of the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look in spite of ankle-bracelets and painted eyes almost as guileless and happy as the round of angels on the roof of Fra Angelico's Nativity.
Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft ethereal grace would become feeble and insipid. With their long robes falling round their feet, and drooping many-coloured wings, they seem not to fly or to walk, but to float along, "smooth sliding without step."
The wings of his angels are at least those of birds, though coloured to fancy, while Angelico's are of pasteboard tinsel and paint. But in spite of the comparative genuineness of his upholstery, as a vision of heaven there can be no hesitation in preferring that of the Florentine.
It invites comparison rather with the similar subjects painted by Fra Angelico than with the Disputa of Raphael, to which German critics compare it; however, it possesses as little of Angelico's sweet blissfulness as the Dominican painter possessed of Duerer's accuracy of hand and searching intensity of visual realisation.
She felt a little calmer then, and bought Fra Angelico's "Coronation," Giotto's "Ascension of St. John," some Della Robbia babies, and some Guido Reni Madonnas. For her taste was catholic, and she extended uncritical approval to every well-known name. But though she spent nearly seven lire, the gates of liberty seemed still unopened.
Cosimo, as we shall see when we reach S. Marco, invited Fra Angelico to paint upon the walls of that convent sweet and simple frescoes to the glory of God. Piero employed Fra Angelico's pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli to decorate this chapel.
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