Fra Angelico (about 1395 to 1455) was an Italian painter and Dominican friar, born Guido di Pietro in the Mugello hills north of Florence. He is remembered for the frescoes he painted in the convent of San Marco in Florence, above all the Annunciation at the top of the dormitory stairs, and for being declared blessed by the Catholic Church in 1982. Angelico, the angelic one, is the nickname that stuck.
He painted for monks, in the rooms where monks slept. Most of what made him famous was never meant for a crowd.
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Every friar's cell at San Marco, the convent where he worked between 1439 and 1443, got its own fresco, a single scene for one man to pray in front of. The Annunciation waited at the top of the stairs, with a line of Latin painted along the bottom asking each friar who passed to stop and say an Ave. The most admired paintings of his life were instructions for prayer, made for the eyes of his own order.
Much of what is told about his character comes from writers who never met him. The best-known story says a pope offered him the archbishopric of Florence and he handed it to another friar. Vasari put it in print in 1550, nearly a century after the painter's death. The dates do not let it stand.
What You'll Discover
What he was before the habit.
Why the famous name came late.
Who paid for the cells.
What the Annunciation asks of you.
Why a pope summoned a friar.
Which famous story fails the dates.