Fra Angelico

Preface To The First Edition

Some six or seven years ago I began to make the art of Fra Angelico a special subject of study. In course of time, becoming more and more intimately acquainted with the master through his works, the conviction came to me that the popular conception of him was mistaken au fond, and that, as an artist, Fra Angelico had never received fair and adequate treatment. The present work owes its inception to that fact.

In seeking to reconstruct for myself his artistic personality, I have not put trust in the conclusions of any other critic, however eminent, but have relied only upon evidence obtained from the artist’s paintings and drawings, and upon the testi¬ mony of contemporary documents.

There are some who will think that I have attached too much importance to Fra Angelico’s studies of Nature and of antique art. They will, perhaps, condemn my whole point of view as “academic” and “stylistic,” so applying to it two epithets which to their ears are the most damning that can be conceived. “ If,” they will say, “ this conception of Fra Angelico is the right one, then so much the worse for Fra Angelico.”

But, indeed, it seems to my judgment that in the great and endless controversy which divides the realm of art, the truth lies, as it so often does in this world, somewhere in the middle ground between two extreme positions. It dwells neither with the intvansigenti of classicalism on the one hand, nor with the propounders of that creed of artistic anarchism which is now so fashionable, on the other. The perfect

vii viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

painter, I venture to think, is not the copyist of Nature or of classical art ; but he is not independent of either. As a Hower artist in the spring-time, in a garden of Japan, chooses, and culls, and combines, blooms from here and there with which to make a flower symphony — a symphony that has its origin in his own imagination ; as the literary artist selects, sometimes from an ancient treasure-house of language, some¬ times from the very mint itself, the words that will most aptly fit his thought; “as the musician gathers his notes and forms his chords until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony”; so from the forms of antique art, as well as from Nature the painter “ selects the elements of his own exquisite combina¬ tions.” Yes! the creator of beautiful things can go down to Archaeology’s valley of dry bonfes, and, from what he finds there, can construct his perfect shapes, clothing them with flesh, and breathing into them the breath of life. And this did Fra Angelico in the Quattrocento.

I have sought to show that, saint as he was, he did not trust only to dreams and visions, nor did he neglect either observation of Nature or the study of classical art. Pie did not lay up the artist’s gift of seeing in a napkin, but he put it to constant, fruitful use.

My best thanks are due to Sir Walter Armstrong, Mr. Bernhard Berenson, Father Charles Bowden, Mr. Sidney Colvin, Herr C. von Fabriczy, Mrs. Dormer Fawcus, Miss Duff Gordon, Mrs. Herringham, Mr. Ernest Hobson, Mr. Charles Loeser, the Lord Bishop of London, the Cavaliere Girolamo Mancini, Dr. J. P. Richter, Mr. S. A. Strong, Professor Villari, and Dr. G. C. Williamson, for various acts of kindness.

Contents

PAGE

List of Illustrations ...... xi

Bibliography ........ xvii

Chapter I

In the broad valley of the Mugello,1 on a little hill above the Sieve, rises the stronghold of Vicchio. Built by the Floren¬ tines early in the fourteenth century to protect their country against the ravages of those turbulent, feudal lords the Conti Guidi, it still preserves a great part of the hexagon of its rubble wall, its two massive gateways, east and west, and some fragments of its flanking towers. Close against its battlements, on the inside, houses have been built. And pots of flowers now stand where once the cross-bow lay at rest, and children’s faces look out through the embrasure where men-at-arms kept watch.

From its western port the eye wanders over a country as fair and fertile as any even in Tuscany, bounded on every side by purple mountains. To the south, on the other side of the river, are hills covered with chestnut, with Monte Giovi behind them ; to the north are the Apennines of Razzuolo, cleft by deep, shadowy valleys ; to the east is the lofty peak of Falterona; whilst to the west, but two miles away, above the green corn and the budding vines,2 can be seen the cypress-crowned hill of Vespignano, with the Pistoiese Apennines, white with snow, in the far distance.

1 The Mugello is the name given to the upper and middle part of the valley of the Sieve : see P. Lino Chini, “ Storia del Mugello,” vol. i., p. 4 ; and Fontani, “ Viaggio pittorico della Toscana,” under “ Pontassieve.”

2 A part of this chapter was written at Vicchio.

Between these majestic boundaries stretches far and wide the garden of the Mugello. Here is no “ wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass” such as Mr. Ruskin1 has imagined, but a land of corn and wine, a land of flowers and fruit, a land of brooks and springs of water ; where, in the month of April, white-crested waves of blossom fleck a broad sea of vivid green, and violets and isis make beautiful the banks of its poplar-shadowed streams.

It was at Vicchio, then, or in its neighbourhood, that Fra Angelico first saw the light in 1387. The Mugello, which had been known in the days of Charles the Great as “ a joyous land,” was at that time even more prosperous than usual under Florentine rule. For whatever may be the disadvant¬ ages of living under the rSgime of a bourgeois oligarchy, it cannot be denied that here, as well as in the neighbouring state of Siena, this form of government brought to the people such peace and security as made it possible for the arts and agriculture to flourish. “ A fair and pleasant land it is,” writes a contemporary chronicler,2 “decked with fruits luscious and delightsome, watered, and made beautiful as a garden, by a limpid river which runs through it from end to end, and by many a rivulet which winds about the plain like a trailing garland.” A fitting home this for the childhood of one who loved so the coloured things of life, flowers and splendid vestments and bright pigments and the flower-like faces of little children.

Fra Angelico’s father, a certain Pietro, gave the child the name of Guido, and, before he became a religious, the future master was known to the world as Guido da Vicchio. Beyond the year and place of his birth, and his father’s baptismal name, we know nothing with certainty of his parentage or his early life. In fact, we have no record which tells us anything

1 Ruskin, “Giotto and his Works in Padua.” London, Allen, 1900,

2 Gio. d’ Jacopo Morelli, “Cronica” (Arch. Stor. Tosc., Serie P1).

H about him before he reached the age of twenty, when he became a postulant at the monastery of the reformed Domi¬ nicans at Fiesole. But that it was not his original intention to take vows may be regarded as well-nigh certain. Had it been so, his noviciate would have commenced some years earlier than it did. There can be little doubt that at first his sole aim was to follow the profession of a painter, and that he passed his youth in some artist’s bottega. Vasari tells us that whilst very young he was perfectly acquainted with the practice of his art, and an earlier biographer, Antonio Billi, records that when still a “ giovanotto ” he painted a picture on the great screen of Sta. Maria Novella.1

The study, too, of Fra Angelico’s works, as we shall presently see, confirms in some measure the statement of the biographers. In the reliquary panels at San Marco, in the Cortona “Annunciation,” in the “Coronation ” of the Louvre, Fra Angelico shows none of the qualities which mark the novice and the amateur. Like all works from the hand of this master, they are admirable in technique. They would seem to confirm the view that in his youth, before entering the cloister, he must have had a thorough professional training under some master who was a competent exponent of the mysteries of tempera painting.

It has been maintained by Baldinucci and others that Fra Angelico’s master was Gherardo Stamina. But there is no early documentary evidence to support this theory. Nor is it possible to prove it by the methods of scientific criticism ; for there is no single work existing that can with certainty be attributed to Stamina. In fact, in regard to many of the later Giottesques, no certain knowledge is attainable. Painters

1 See “II Libro di Antonio Billi,” edited by C. de Fabriczy, in “Arch. Stor. Ital.,” 1891, p. 326. Antonio Billi wrote between 1516 and 1530. The great screen was destroyed in 1565. Fra Angelico may have painted at Sta. Maria Novella about 1406-7. But it seems more probable that he was not employed there until after 1418.

i5 like Agnolo Gaddi had great factories of pictures, in which almost everything was done by rule, and little scope was left to individual fancy. Moreover, in these botteghe, co-operation no less than convention robbed works of art of the stamp of individuality. The handicraftsmen who thronged them worked on each other’s pictures and copied each other’s figures. Such frescoes as those in the Castellani chapel at Santa Croce are not the work of a single hand, but of a whole school. From such paintings we can get but few reliable data to help us in re-constructing this or that master’s artistic personality. It is difficult to see, then, how any person really imbued with the scientific spirit could venture to pronounce oracularly upon such a question as this.

To make an induction from a few uncertain data, and then to give it to the world with dogmatic emphasis, is, unfortunately, a growing practice in several of the younger sciences, and with some exponents of the new criticism in painting it is becoming habitual.

A little general knowledge of the kind of evidence that lies hidden in Italian archives as to the condition of art in Italy at the time of the Renaissance would soon lead anyone who is seriously interested in Italian art to rate the pretensions and assertions of a few over-dogmatic critics at their proper value. At Florence and at Siena there are records of hundreds of painters, men who were engaged in important undertakings, and to wrhom not one existing picture is attributed. But have all their works perished ? Have only the works remained of those artists whose names we see in catalogues ?

At Siena, for instance, we find the names of one hundred and ninety painters who were at work there in the fourteenth century. Of these I know of only seventeen to whom any works are attributed. We find in the same archives the names of nearly sixty artists who painted there in the thirteenth century. Of these there are only seven whose names we can

1 6

discover in any list or catalogue. Is it reasonable to seek to assign every picture of either of these epochs that belongs to the Sienese school to one of the very few painters of whose style we have any knowledge ? Is it not certain that many paintings in our galleries, and on the walls of our churches, are by artists of whom we know nothing, and can know nothing certainly ?

I am convinced that an honest, rigid application of the scientific method would lead to many labels being removed from pictures and to few being added. And yet the opposite process is continually going on. We are continually hearing of “ discoveries ” and rumours of discoveries, the origin of which, it is to be feared, is due in many cases to an un¬ acknowledged hankering after notoriety on the part of the discoverer, or to more sordid considerations. Those who are not overawed by a parade of the terminology of scientific criticism will bring to the consideration of such attributions a healthy scepticism.

For is he in reality scientific who definitely formulates conclusions based upon insufficient data, and then dogmatically proclaims them as though they were facts ? The question may seem to be childish and unnecessary, but it is a question that a critic who wishes to be true to the scientific method has need to ask himself continually to-day. For, unless he be watchful, a restless craving for publicity, and many petty jealousies, will warp his critical faculty and rob him of the power of properly estimating the value of evidence. Above all else, the scientific critic should cultivate humility, scepticism, reasonableness, good temper, and, not least of all, a sense of humour. For lack of these qualities on the part of some of its exponents, the method of Morelli has not yet won the general adherence that it ought to have. There are certain problems of art which will perhaps one day be solved, but in regard to which we have not enough data to arrive at a solution at present. There are other problems which, as Dr. Richter has recently reminded us, “ are not only unsolved but insoluble.” The

*7 intelligent layman will have more faith in their knowledge when the hierarchs of the new creed shall have learned to say sometimes “ I don’t know.”

Let it be admitted at once that we know next to nothing about Stamina, and that it is impossible to say whether or not he was Fra Angelico’s master. We are, in fact, very much in the dark as to the young Guido’s artistic training. And in the effort to discover who his master was the friar’s works give us but little assistance. For Fra Angelico had a very marked individuality, and from the first was never a mere imitator. Born nine years before Andrea del Castagno, ten years before Paolo Uccello, thirteen years before Domenico Veneziano, and fourteen years before Masaccio, he and Masolino were the oldest pioneers of the new movement in painting. He was always eager to acquire new knowledge, but when acquired it had to be thoroughly assimilated before being used. It must pass through the alembic of the master’s potent idiosyncrasy. Even when most strongly under the influence of others, as, for example, in his later years, when he owed so much to Michelozzo and Masaccio, he was never content merely to reproduce what he had gained from them. Early in his career he found himself ; and no artist was ever more true to his own temperament. Artistically, at least, he dared to live his own life, and his works, too, reveal that in other things he was no respecter of persons. His development was continuous, and he always developed on his own lines. He did not, like another brother of San Marco, Fra Bartolommeo, allow himself to be diverted from his own true course by some masterful personality.

We cannot say, then, who Fra Angelico’s master was. We can only relate what were the most important artistic influences in Florence in the time of his youth. There were, in the early years of the fifteenth century, three great centres of artistic life in the city. First, the botteghe of the pupils of the Gaddi ; secondly, the schools of the miniaturists, and chief

D i8 amongst these the school of the Camaldolese convent of Sta. Maria degli Angeli ; and, thirdly, the group of young sculptors, Jacopo della Quercia and Ghiberti, Brunelleschi and Donatello, who were destined to fashion the most perfect art-works of the Quattrocento. By all these, as we shall see, Fra Angelico was influenced.

And first let us speak of the school of Giotto and of the miniaturists. We cannot, indeed, say who was Fra Angelico’s master. But there is one artist, trained in one of the Gaddi schools, and, moreover, a miniaturist as well as a fresco painter, by whom he would seem to have been influenced, and that is Lorenzo Monaco. This artist, largely in virtue of his technical qualities, stands out from the confused crowd of Agnolo Gaddi’s followers. His drawing was not better than that of his other contemporaries. He had, too, as weak a sense of material significance as theirs. In fact, some of his best pictures, the “Adoration of the Magi” and the Trinita “ Annunciation,” are characterized by an almost total absence of relief. But what charms us in these works is their rich, harmonious colour, their fine technique. In spite of the fact that the picture is wanting in nearly all the essential qualities of great figure painting, few who have been there will forget the moment when, in the dimly-lighted church, the rich glamour of the Camaldolese’s “ Annunciation ” broke upon them as they passed through the iron gates of the Salimbeni chapel.

Lorenzo Monaco’s technique, at least in his panel pictures, differs, then, from that of the Gaddi school as described for us by Lorenzo’s own contemporary, Cennino Cennini. The reason of this difference requires some explanation. In the history of art, painting upon panels is a later development than mural painting and miniature painting. It was in part derived from the one art, in part from the other. In some schools, in some masters, tempera painting is more closely allied to mural painting. In others the methods of its practitioners are derived in the main from the miniaturists. Now amongst the

Giottesques fresco painting was the predominant art, and tempera painting was largely conditioned by it. But Lorenzo Monaco, although a fresco painter and a pupil of the Gaddi, was very much influenced in his technique by the miniaturists. The cause of this is not far to seek. Lorenzo was a member of the great Camaldolese house of Sta. Maria degli Angeli. For more than a generation a school of miniaturists had been established at this monastery. It had grown to be of great importance, and such members of it as Don Simone and Don Jacopo di Francese had won for it a high reputation through¬ out Italy. Moreover, Lorenzo Monaco himself practised the art of miniature painting as a member of this famous school. It is not surprising, therefore, that in his panel pictures he should have adopted some of the methods of the miniaturists. From them he acquired greater skill than his brother Giottesques could show in the blending and harmonizing of tones. His flesh tints are more carefully fused. The colour of his draperies is richer and more transparent.

It is in his mode of colouring draperies that the influence of the miniaturists is most clearly seen. The Giottesque, when he set about painting in tempera, say a blue garment, would proceed as follows. He would take three vases. In one he would place ultramarine and biacca in equal quantities ; in another, two parts ultramarine and one part biacca ; in an¬ other, two parts biacca and one part ultramarine. With these three shades of colour he would paint his garment, using only touches of white for the highest lights. Lorenzo Monaco, on the other hand, and especially in his late work, did not rely so entirely upon the mixing of white in different proportions with the pure colour before painting for obtaining his grada¬ tions of tone ; though of course he placed some white with every colour. In fact, the method of the three vases was considerably modified by the Camaldolese. He no longer used pure biacca only for the highest lights. To obtain his gradations of tone he was accustomed to draw, with a small brush of minever, fine parallel lines of white upon the main colour of the garment after it had dried.

Now in Fra Angelico’s work we find exactly the same modification of the methods of the Giottesques. It would be assuming too much to say for this reason that he was a pupil of Lorenzo Monaco ; but there is ground for supposing that the older artist influenced the younger. Perhaps Fra Angelico also learned miniature painting in the school of Sta. Maria degli Angeli. That in his early life he did some work as a miniaturist there can be little reasonable doubt. For, as we shall see, the history of the first two periods of his artistic career is the story of his gradual and complete emancipation from the defects of the miniaturist. But there are no miniatures now in existence that can be traced to him. And although an important school of miniature grew up at San Marco under his influence, there is no evidence to show that he practised this art either there or at San Domenico. Fra Benedetto, assisted by several other brothers, commenced the writing of the choir-books of San Marco, and after his death that part of the work was finished by Fra Giovanni di Guido, a P'ranciscan. There is no record of any miniatures painted by Fra Benedetto in the “Ricordanze” of the convent. As regards the figures, these were the work of Zanobi di Benedetto degli Strozzi and his assistants. Filippo di Matteo Torelli painted the ornamental borders.1

But the most important centres of artistic influence in the early years of the Quattrocento were the botteghe of that young group of architects and sculptors who were destined to win for themselves so glorious a name. The Venetian painting of the sixteenth century and the Tuscan sculpture of the fourteenth are, for many of us, Italy’s two most important contributions to art. Her other artistic achievements have often been over-rated. But for these additions to the sum of

1 “ Ricordanze di San Marco,” I. In the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence (Cod. 902). See Appendix II., p. 159.

2 I the world’s beautiful things men can never be too grateful to her. Fra Angelico soon became an enthusiast about the new movement. The story of his fruitful admiration of great artists like Brunelleschi and Michelozzo is written in his works. We shall read it there later on. Of the artistic milieu , then, of Fra Angelico’s early years, the later Giottesques, the miniaturists, and this eager band of youthful sculptors and architects were the chief constituent parts.

In seeking to arrive at a more intelligent appreciation of this or that artist’s achievement, it is, of course, of primary importance to obtain some accurate knowledge of the purely artistic influences of his youth. But having regard to the important, although sometimes neglected, fact of the solidarity of every human character, of the interdependence of its several elements, no wise student who wishes to reconstruct for himself an artist’s personality will fail to take into account all the other influences that helped to make him what he was. And it is especially important to do this in the case of a Florentine painter of the Quattrocento. For the Florentines, to the detriment of their art, were so much more than artists ; and they were very powerfully affected in their art, as in other things, by the religious and philosophical movements of their time.

There were, we find, two great connected movements in Florence in those early years of the fourteenth century, both of which acted upon Fra Angelico and helped to mould his career. In his early youth, Florence became the centre of the humanist movement. Under the patronage of men like Palla Strozzi, adherents flocked to it day by day. Manuel Chrysoloras lectured on Greek to crowded audiences. Niccolo Niccoli sent his emissaries over land and sea in search of manuscripts. The flower of Florentine youth became eager about classical literature. Whilst the actual, if unrealized, tendency of the movement was, as Creighton says, “ the emancipation of the individual from the tyranny of outward systems,” it was not regarded by the majority of its first promoters as being in any way hostile to Catholicism. The typical men of the movement in the early years of the Quattrocento are not Lorenzo Valla and Francesco Filelfo, but Giannozzo Manetti and Niccolo Niccoli, Tommaso Parentucelli and Ambrogio Traversari. All of these lived and died as good Christians. Virgil was Dante’s guide and companion in his soul’s long pilgrimage towards spiritual emancipation. And the early humanists held, with the great Tuscan, that the pursuit of classical culture tended rather to confirm a good Christian in his faith.

A certain tendency to imitate pagan vices showed itself, it is true, amongst a section of the early humanists, and gave earnest men cause for serious alarm. One of the first to sound a note of warning was the great Dominican preacher and scholar, Giovanni Dominici. He was no ignorant re¬ vivalist. He was no foe to art or to literary culture. But he deplored the excesses of some of the adherents of the new movement, and determined to do his best to check them. To promote this object he first sought to reform his own order, and so to make it a more fit instrument for effecting the end that he had in view. And with this aim he established houses of Dominicans with a more rigid rule under men whom he had inspired with some of his own reforming zeal. He wrote treatises, too, in which he expounded his views, and he travelled from end to end of Italy, preaching in all the great towns, and warning his fellow-countrymen of their danger.

When he first preached in Santa Reparata, the impression¬ able inhabitants of the Tuscan Athens, ever eager to learn some new thing, flocked to listen to the new teacher. He at once gained the ear of the citizens. One of his hearers tells us that he had never been stirred by eloquence so great. “ The friar spoke of the Incarnation in such a manner as to pierce asunder soul and body, and to compel all men to follow after him.” And, precisely because he was no mere fervid revivalist whose appeal was only to the emotions, his influence was not evanescent. He drew many young men to him who remained faithful to the principles he inspired them with, and won for themselves a merited reputation for saintliness, but who, at the same time, were never insensible to the claims of reason and the intellect. Of such was that eminently rational saint, S. Antonino. And there were others of his comrades who possessed the same excellent qualities of heart and mind.

Amongst those who sought admission to the reformed order were Guido da Vicchio and his brother Benedetto. But for the influence of Dominici, the young Mugellese would probably have been content to follow only the profession of a painter. It was this new teacher, himself a lover of art and a friend of artists, who led Fra Angelico to devote himself to the religious life.

It was in 1407 that the two brothers presented themselves at the door of the convent which Dominici had founded on the lower slopes of the hill of Fiesole. The founder himself had then left Florence, having been sent to Rome on a mission from the Republic ; but his successor welcomed the young men, and passed them on at once to a house of the reformed branch of the order of Cortona, as there was no novitiate at Florence. Fra Angelico returned to Fiesole in the following year, but he was not destined to remain there long. In 1409 the brotherhood was compelled to leave its house there be¬ cause of its fidelity to the true Pope, Gregory XII., and its consequent refusal to give allegiance to Alexander V., who had been irregularly elected by the council of Pisa, and of whom the Florentines were partisans. The main body of the brethren betook themselves to Foligno, where they found a hospitable welcome at the hands of the head of the house of Trinci. Sant’ Antonino, however, and some of the younger brothers went to Cortona, and remained there until 1411. In that year the Etruscan city came under Florentine rule, and its inhabitants were compelled to accept Alexander’s successor, John XXIII., as their Pope. Thereupon Sant’ Antonino,1 loyal still to Gregory XII., left Cortona and joined the rest of his exiled brethren at Foligno, returning to Cortona in 1414 with the whole body of the exiled brothers. Subsequently the schism in the Church was healed by the council of Constance, and in 1418 the friars were enabled to return to their home at Fiesole.

It is probable that Fra Angelico followed the same fortunes as Sant’ Antonino and the others of the community who had but lately taken vows. And if such was the case he must have spent seven or eight years of his early manhood in the hill-set Etruscan town.

Cortona stands on one of the eastern spurs of Monte Egidio, high up above the valley of the Chiana. The con¬ vent of San Domenico, of which little more than the church remains, occupied the south-western corner of the city, and the view from its garden is remarkable for its extent and beauty. Far below lies the broad, level valley, with the Apennines of Montepulciano on its western side. To the south are low hills which but half conceal the lake of Trasimene. Castigdione del Lago can be seen on the farther shore. This landscape, as we shall presently see, made a powerful impression upon the young painter. But it is not of such influences that we here wish to speak. At Cortona, Fra Angelico's tendencies towards a religious life were strengthened and confirmed. The city was already full of memories of saints. Here had lived in the previous generation that “grande servo di Dio,” Frate Ricardo of the Augustinians ; who wrote, in exquisite Tuscan, for the use of