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Updated: May 6, 2025
Without its desks and cases it would be one of the most beautiful rooms in Florence. All the books have gone, save the illuminated music. In the first cloisters, which are more liveable-in than the ordinary Florentine cloisters, having a great shady tree in the midst with a seat round it, and flowers, are the Fra Angelicos I have mentioned. The other painting is rather theatrical and poor.
Ursule, and all those other lovely things, so infantile in their simplicity, and yet so exquisitely graceful and pure and beautiful. I don't know as I saw anything in Europe to equal them for pathos in their own way except, of course, the Fra Angelicos at San Marco in Florence." "I don't think I've seen them," Lucy murmured, with an uncomfortable air.
Hundreds who read these lines must themselves remember the unmistakable thrill of genuine pleasure with which they first gazed upon the Fra Angelicos at San Marco, the Memlings at Bruges, the Giottos in the Madonna dell' Arena at Padua. To many of us, those are real epochs in our inner life. To the men of fifty years ago, the bare avowal itself would have seemed little short of affected silliness.
Our horses were tired, and one lean donkey, who, after much trouble, was produced from a farmhouse and yoked in front of them, rendered but little assistance. Next day we duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis.
The principal magnets that draw people here, no doubt, are the Fra Angelicos and Botticelli's "Primavera"; but in five at least of the rooms there is not an uninteresting picture, while the collection is so small that one can study it without fatigue no little matter after the crowded Uffizi and Pitti.
And now let us look at the Angelicos again. Before leaving the Accademia for the last time, one should glance at the tapestries near the main entrance, just for fun. That one in which Adam names the animals is so delightfully naive that it ought to be reproduced as a nursery wall-paper.
It is peculiarly interesting to walk out of the Michelangelo gallery into the little room containing the Fra Angelicos: to pass from a great melancholy saturnine sculptor, the victim of the caprice of princes temporal and spiritual, his eyes troubled with world knowledge and world weariness, to the child-like celebrant of the joy of simple faith who painted these gay and happy pictures.
He died at Florence in 1681. No. 208, a "Virgin Enthroned," by Fra Bartolommeo, is from S. Marco, and it had better have been painted on the wall there, like the Fra Angelicos, and then the convent would have it still. The Child is very attractive, as almost always in this artist's work, but the picture as a whole has grown rather dingy.
One other good Lorenzo is here, an "Adoration of the Magi," No. 39, a little out of drawing but full of life. But for most people the glory of the room is not Lorenzo the Monk, but Brother Giovanni of Fiesole, known ever more as Beato, or Fra, Angelico. Two Angelicos are in this room the great triptych, opposite the chief Lorenzo, and the "Crowning of the Virgin," on an easel.
Our horses were tired, and one lean donkey, who, after much trouble, was produced from a farmhouse and yoked in front of them, rendered but little assistance. Next day we duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis.
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