Fra Angelico &Fra Filippo Lippi

By: Sharon J. and Christine T.

Fra Angelico• “He was kind to other people and moderate, lived

chastely and far from the temptations of this world. He would often say that anyone practicing the art of painting needed a quiet and untroubled life, and that the man who portrayed the words of Christ should live with Christ.

Fra Angelico

• Fra Angelico was born Guidolino di Pietro, around 1395 in Vicchio di Mugello.

• He died in Rome in 1455.• He was a contemporary of

Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio.

Fra Angelico• His work was a

product of his life as a monk.

• Painting was his vocation and his works were created to adorn churches and monasteries.

Fra Angelico

• His earliest paintings were probably manuscript illumination.

• Fra Angelico’s brother, who entered monastic life with him, was a scribe.

Fra Angelico• At Fiesoli he produced his

first known works.– An altarpiece for the high

altar.– The Annunciateion (now in

the Prado).

Fra Angelico• His use of perspective is still

in the Byzantine tradition of inverse perspective, placing the viewer as the point of view of the figures in the icon - instead of the other way around. The intent is to place the viewer in divine, not human, space.

Fra Angelico• In another

work, his Deposition, we see a painting that owes much to Masaccio in terms of its presentation of subjects and space.

Fra AngelicoH.W. Janson describes Fra Angelico’s art as “…something of a paradox. The deeply reverential attitude presents an admixture of traditional Gothic piety and Renaissance grandeur bestilled by contemplative calm.”

Fra Angelico

• His St. Nicholas of Bari depicts two miracles of the saint, who appears twice – as a saint in the sky above and thanking a merchant in the bottom left of the painting.

Fra Angelico• In 1436 he and his

Dominican brothers moved to San Marco, in Florence.

• Here, some of his most famous works adorn the monks’ cells.

• These were intended to assist in prayer.

Fra Angelico

• Other hugely important works adorn the altarpiece.

Fra Angelico

• His fame brought him commissions from two popes. – Eugenius and Nicholas.

Fra Angelico

• Other important works were commissioned for the cathedral of Orvieto, in Italy.

Fra Angelico• This quiet, good man, was

beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1984.

• The Roman Catholic Church celebrates February 18 as his feast day – commemorating his death in 1455.

Fra Filippo Lippi‘Fra Filippo Lippi was

gracious and ornate and exceedingly

skilful; he was very good at compositions

and at variety, at coloring, relief, and

in ornaments of every kind', wrote

Cristoforo Landino in 1480; his comment

remains a valid assessment of Fra

Filippo's style

Fra Filippo LippiAs an orphan

Filippo was sent to the Carmelite

friary in Florence. But he was not

temperamentally suited to be a

friar. His life is a tale of lawsuits,

complaints, broken promises

and scandal.

Fra Filippo Lippi- Not all Florentine painting during the mid

15th century was of a religious nature, during this time portraiture comes into its own as a major form of artistic expression.

- One of the most famous of these portrait artists was Lippi

- His painting called Portrait of a Woman and Man 1435-1445 (left) is one of the earliest surviving double portraits of the Renaissance

- The exact reason for the painting still remains a mystery

Fra Filippo Lippi Madonna and Child with Angles, c. 1455, tempera

on wood

Fra Filippo Lippi/ linear style/ use of models

Fra Filippo Lippi.

Madonna Adoring Christ,

1450s