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Updated: June 30, 2025
Is the genius of Fra Angelico, of Francia, or of Raffaelle disparaged by the fact that he was able to do that in colours which no man that ever lived, which no Angel, could achieve in wood?
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet.
How did Andre Chenier's mother look? And you said: 'There is a portrait of her: a faded Levantine." He excused himself and thought that he had not spoken so impertinently. "You did. My memory is better than yours." They were walking in the white silence of the convent. They saw the cell which Angelico had ornamented with the loveliest painting.
Certainly, it cannot be said of Angelico's fresco that it throws into a sensible form our highest thoughts about man and his relation to the world; but it did not do this adequately even for Angelico.
The assertion and contradiction of ideas and theories, the rivalries of differing schools, the sweet devotion of Fra Angelico, the innovations of Masolino and Masaccio, the theory of perspective of Paolo Uccello, the varied works of Fabriano, Antonello da Messina, the Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, the Bellini, and their contemporaries, culminated in the inimitable painting of the Cinquecento in works still unsurpassed, ever challenging artists of later centuries to the task of equalling or excelling them.
Cosimo de' Medici had a villa near the convent of S. Domenico at Fiesole, where, as it is said, he would often go when Careggi was too far, and the summer had turned the city into a furnace. Here, as we may think, he may well have talked with Fra Angelico, for he would often walk in the cloisters in the evening with the friars, and must have seen and praised the frescoes there.
For the church of Santa Trinita, Florence, Angelico executed a "Deposition from the Cross," and for the church of the Angeli, a "Last Judgment," both now in the Florentine academy; for S. Maria Novella, a "Coronation of the Virgin," with a predella in three sections, now in the Uffizi, this again is one of his masterpieces.
"Angels, Te filo!" said the Father. "Hm! I do not know. It is hard to paint the holy angels, and diligent as you have been, I hardly think you are an Angelico. But go and bring what you have done, and I will see. Indeed, it is just what I would have, but it must be well done, or it will spoil the rest."
And throughout the course of its later development, always subordinate to architectural effect, the work of the Venetian school never escaped from the influence of its beginnings. Unassisted, and therefore unperplexed, by naturalism, religious mysticism, philosophical theories, it had no Giotto, no Angelico, no Botticelli.
I remember two faces of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico, and I just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa Apollina, with something of the same quality, which I was sure had their prototypes in the world above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is, that it has no women to be worshipped.
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