Fra Angelico

As I was getting ready to begin my post on the Annunciation, I realized that it was about to become a post on Fra Angelico. Since that would do justice to neither the Annunciation nor Fra Angelico, the friar gets his own post.

 

Dominic et al at the Coronation

Fra Angelico's real name was Blessed John of Fiesole, which I just learned from Wikipedia. So if you want a good historical explanation about him, you should consult that and not me.

What really interests me about Fra Angelico is San Marco Monastery.

Cell 3 in San Marco

Fra Angelico (and his helpers) painted devotional images in the cells of the friars in San Marco. These are significant for a number of reasons.

They're simultaneously a set and a series. There's a progression in their subject matter depending on the stage of religious life the occupant was in (the novices traditionally occupied a certain block of cells). The novice cells were primarily filled with crucifixions, since that had to be understood before anything else. St. Dominic also gets older as the images progress into the cells occupied by older members of the congregation.

While all of that is interesting, my fascination comes from the following:

1. They were painted for the friars, not for the world.
Fra Angelico did not expect to gain fame during his lifetime for painting them. They were painted in cells: a part of the monastery closed to the public. Like Michelangelo sculpting the back of David even though he thought no one would see it, Fra Angelico painted for God.

Noli me tangere

2. He is master of the theologically correct gesture.
There are a lot of really atrocious pictures of Mary and the saints. Not because they're ugly -- in fact they're often quite beautiful. Rather, despite the fact that religious art is often intended to be didactic, they bestow gestures, expressions, and postures upon the Church Triumphant that span a vast array between annoyingly inaccurate to outright heretical. I've seen enough pictures of the Annunciation or Mary Magdalen to really appreciate it when someone really gets it right. It's said that a picture's worth a thousand words. Most of what we say and convey as humans isn't oral -- by showing this with his brush, Fra Angelico has written his Summa Theologia on plaster walls.

The Mocking

3. His simplicity amplifies the truly important.
In looking at the images of Fra Angelico, it is easy to see the purpose for which they were originally painted: to be objects to foster contemplation. This purpose explains why some of his pictures are seemingly "incomplete" -- such as the one at right. The disembodied heads and hands are in fact more fully bodied than if they were fully drawn because they represent us. We are the ones buffeting and spitting upon Christ. Unlike so many other Renaissance artists, Fra Angelico avoids the temptation for elaboration. Michelangelo added buff naked figures to the background of his Holy Family picture because he liked to paint them, and was good at it. Fra Angelico avoids the temptation to indulge in exhibitions of artistic mastery, and by doing something creates something free of superfluities, something truly conducive to leading the soul to contemplation.

4. Fra Angelico shows us a model of how to pray.

St. Dominic at the Crucifixion

A characteristic feature of Fra Angelico's paintings in San Marco is that St. Dominic or some other saint from the ranks of the Friars Preachers is often portrayed as present at a biblical scene in contemplation/adoration of the events. Dominic is sometimes portrayed as studying -- rightly seen as a form of prayer by the Dominicans -- such as in the above picture of The Mocking. The implication is not that Dominic bi-located, but rather, that, through contemplation, we are connected outside of time to the mystical body of Christ. Our contemplation can literally bring us to calvary, to the coronation. It is in the act of contemplation that the past of the faith becomes our present and can be brought forward to affect our lives. It is only once we have been to the foot of the cross that we can share it with others.