Part 2

In all his work Fra Angelico showed himself an innovator, a man who, in thinking for himself, would not allow his own clear vision to be obscured by the conventions that bound men of smaller mentality and less significant achievement. At the same time he was very observant of the progress of his peers, particularly in architecture, and students of this branch of art cannot fail to notice his response to the developments brought about by Michelozzo and Brunelleschi. Even in the first period of his art he would have seemed a daring innovator to his contemporaries for, all unconsciously he was taking his share in shaping the great Renaissance movement that left so many timid souls outside the radius of its illumination.

In the early days he approached the human body with some diffidence, and though a greater courage in this regard is the keynote of Renaissance painting, the earlier timidity is hardly to be wondered at when we consider the attitude of the religious houses towards humanity in its physical aspect, and how necessary it was to avoid anything approaching sensuous imagery throughout that anxious period of transition. As he grew older and more confident of his powers, Fra Angelico seems to have freed himself from some of the restrictions that beset an artist who is also a religious. He, too, learned to glorify the human form.

His love for Nature remained constant throughout all the years of his life; he was sufficiently daring to introduce real landscape into his pictures, and by so doing, to become one of the fathers of landscape painting. His angels have a setting in the Italy he knew best, the flowers that strew their paths are those he may have gathered in the convent garden; for even his vivid and exalted imagination could not create aught more beautiful than those that grew so freely and wild by the wayside, or were tended by his brethren in San Marco.

We find throughout the pictures a suggestion that the life of the artist was a serene and tranquil one that, while he was actively concerned with things of art throughout the district he knew best, he was sheltered by the house of the brotherhood from the tumult and turmoil that beset Fiesole, Cortona, and Foligno in the days of his youth. When he went to San Marco in Florence, where his most enduring memorial remains to this day, Fra Angelico was a man of experience and an independence so far in advance of his time, that some of the work he had accomplished comes to us to-day with a suggestion of absolute modernity in thought if not in treatment. No beauty that our more sophisticated age can reveal to us had passed him by, he paints Nature as Milton painted it when he wrote the "Masque of Comus" and "l'Allegro." And this manner of painting, so different from that of men who mix themselves with the world and surrender to its fascinations, is the painting that endures.

III

IN SAN MARCO

It was in 1435, and Fra Angelico was approaching his fiftieth year, when the brotherhood of San Dominico quitted their convent in Fiesole and went to find a new home in Florence. With the turn of the year they left a temporary resting-place in San Giorgio Oltr' Arno and went into the ruined monastery of San Marco. This house appears to have belonged to the brotherhood of San Silvestro whose behaviour had been quite fitted to the fifteenth century in Florence, but was not altogether creditable to a religious house. Pope Eugenius IV., anxious to purify all the religious houses, gave San Marco to the Dominicans with the consent of Cosimo di Medici, and a very poor gift it was at the time, for the dormitory had been destroyed by fire, and hastily-made wooden cabins could not keep out the rain and cold wind. There was a great mortality among the brethren. Once again the Pope Eugenius interceded with the powerful ruler of Florence, and Cosimo sent for his well-beloved architect Michelozzo and commissioned him to rebuild the monastery. Naturally enough Fra Angelico, whose feeling for architecture was finely developed, came under the influence of the architect, and when the building was complete he was commissioned to adorn the walls with frescoes that should keep before the brethren the actualities of the religious life, and enable them to feel that the Spiritual Presence was in their midst.

Cosimo's munificence had not stopped with the presentation of the building to the brotherhood. He equipped the monastery with a famous library, provided all the service books that were necessary, and gave the brethren for librarian a man who was destined to ascend the Fisherman's Throne and keep the keys of Heaven. The books were illuminated by Fra Angelico's brother Benedetto, who had taken the vows with him, indeed some critics are of opinion that Fra Angelico himself assisted in the work, but for this belief there appears to be but a very small foundation.

The Pope Eugenius, compelled by the quarrels of the great houses in Rome to leave the Eternal City, came to Florence and saw Fra Angelico's work there, and this visit paved the way for the painter's sojourn in Rome in the last years of his life. Like so many of his contemporaries, Eugenius could find time amid the distractions of a stormy and difficult existence to keep a well-trained eye upon the artistic developments going on around him, and he did but wait for peace and opportunity to show himself as keen a patron of art as that "terrible pontiff," Julius della Rovere, for whom Michelangelo was to work in the Sistine Chapel.

To realise the life that the painter saw around him in the days when the Dominican brotherhood first went to San Marco, it is necessary to turn to some historian of Florence in an endeavour to recall the splendour and stateliness of the city's life. The limits of space forbid any attempt, however modest, to picture Florence in detail as it was in those days, though the subject could scarcely be more tempting to the pen. The pomp and circumstance of life were not passed over by the painter, whose extraordinary receptivity found so much more in Florence than in Fiesole for its exercise. Some echo, however, subdued to convent walls, lingers in the city to-day where San Marco preserves its great painter's reputation, and tells us that he was not indifferent to the sights and sounds beyond its gates.

A few of the frescoes have lost a little of their pristine beauty and yet, for all the ravages of time, the most faded among them can suggest much of the charm they possessed when they were painted. It is in the open cloisters, of course, that the greatest damage has been done, and the great "Crucifixion" in the chapter-house has not escaped lightly; but in the cells where the work is more protected, time has dealt lightly with the frescoes and the two or three little panels that help to make the friar's lasting monument. Good judges have pointed out that the great "Crucifixion" in the chapter-house, the largest work of the painter, was never completed, and that the red background was intended to serve as a bed for the blue that was never put on. Nobody can say why this fine work was abandoned, and reproduction in colour is impossible. Even a detail would be unsatisfactory, but one of the lunettes from the cloister is given here. It represents Christ as a pilgrim meeting two Dominican brothers, and gives an excellent suggestion of Fra Angelico at his best, revealing the deep feeling of the religious man, and the skill of the artist blended together in happiest and most inspired union. To have seen the picture in his mind, the artist must have been a deeply religious man; to have expressed the vision as he has expressed it in terms of line and colour, the devotee must have been a great artist.

From one of the cells in San Marco the chief part of another picture has been reproduced in these pages. It represents the "Coronation of the Virgin." Christ seated upon a white cloud is placing a crown upon the Virgin's head; there is a rainbow border with six saints. In order that the beauty of the central figures may be seen, no more than a part of the picture is given here. It is the more important part, for the saints are conventional figures, each with the hands uplifted in adoration, each with a halo round his head. The beauty of the stories that Fra Angelico sets before us was as true to him as the beauty of the flowers he painted, and the landscape that met his eyes whenever he walked abroad. The modern world, whether it doubt or believe, cannot but recognise that the artist of San Marco has succeeded as much by his faith as by his art. The other frescoes of the Dominican House must be left for the fortunate minority who can visit them, but these two will be found to represent well and truthfully both the religious idea and the artistic achievement. To realise their merits to the full one must not fail to bear in mind the development of painting at the time when they were painted. For the men who came after Angelico the task was easier; he had paved the way for them. In the days when San Marco was decorated, the painter had very little to add to his technical knowledge, and nothing at all to his feeling for the beauty of the Gospel stories, and few artists of the fifteenth century have been so fortunate as to collect their best work in one place where it could remain undisturbed throughout the ages.

Naturally enough it must pass--cloisters and chapter-house show signs of the times all too clearly. "The Crucifixion" is faded not so badly as Leonardo's "Last Supper" in the Santa Maria della Grazie of Milan, but still seriously, nor can all the _lire_ of faithful but hurried tourists restore its charm. It is in the cells that the work of Fra Angelico will linger longest, and it is pleasant to speculate upon the debt that devout monks must have owed to their artist brother, who could give them such exquisite embodiments of the truth as he saw it to brighten their hard lives and assure them, even in hours of doubt and mental trouble, of the joys that would be associated with the latter end.

San Marco, then, may be regarded as an exquisite and enduring memorial of the middle period of Fra Angelico's life. The saint that was in him dreamed dreams and saw visions, the artist that was in him expressed them in fashion that calls for admiration even in these days when the work done is nearly four hundred years old, and the thought that gave it birth is no longer held in such universal esteem. The devotion that inspired the themes, the simplicity of his handling, the beauty of his colour, the love of Nature that was expressed as often as the picture would permit, the reverential feeling in treatment that was bound to communicate itself to the spectator, all these qualities make the work remarkable, and help us to see how strong was the faith that inspired and kept the artist happy in the cloisters when, had he wished to turn his talent to other purposes, he might have had riches and honour. Leading rulers of men were building palaces in every great city, conquerors and statesmen were seeking to excel one another in tasteful and costly display. Of those who could have commanded wealth, honour, and comfort, the Dominican friar was among the first. But it sufficed Fra Angelico to serve neither kings nor princes, but to choose for his worship the King of kings "Who made the heavens and the earth and all that is therein."

IV

LATER YEARS

There is a great temptation to linger awhile in San Marco with the friar, for even to-day the place has not lost its appeal, and there are sufficient landmarks in the surrounding city to enable us to trace the influence of men who were at once the contemporaries and inspirers of his genius. Only the limits of space intervene to forbid too long a stay in Florence, and as the painter's later years were spent in Rome we must follow him there. For those who wish to linger in the monastery there are books in plenty, some dealing with the Quattrocento, others dealing with the Popes, others with Fra Angelico himself. This outline of a painter's life seeks to do no more than introduce him to those who may be interested; it is not intended for those who wish to follow him beyond the limits of a modest appreciation. Vasari, Crowe, and Cavalcaselle, Professor Langton Douglas, Bernhard Berenson and others will supply the more complete and detailed accounts of the painter's life and works, and the careful reader will find sufficient references to other writers to direct him to every side issue.

Pope Eugenius IV., who visited Florence when he was exiled from Rome, had settled for a while in Bologna until the anti-Pope Felix V. fell from power, and had then hastened back to Rome, and settled down to beautify the Vatican. Like all the great men of his generation he felt the spirit of the Renaissance in the air, and desired no more than leisure in order to respond to it. He remembered the clever artist, whose work had charmed him in the days of his Florentine exile, and sent an invitation to Fra Angelico to come to Rome and decorate one of the chapels in the Vatican. In those days one travelled in Italy, even more slowly than one does to-day by the Italian express trains--strange as the statement may seem to moderns who know the country well--and by the time that the friar had received the summons and had responded to it, Eugenius IV. would appear to have relinquished the keys to his successor. Happily the new Pope Nicholas V. was a scholar, a gentleman, and a statesman, as responsive to the new ideas as his predecessor in office. He gathered the best men of his time to the Vatican, which he proposed to rebuild, and he entered upon a programme that could scarcely have been carried out had he enjoyed a much longer lease of life than Providence granted. Unfortunately he had no more than eight years to rule at St. Peter's, and that did not serve for much more than a beginning of his great scheme. He was succeeded by Tomaso Parentucelli, that ardent scholar whom Cosimo di Medici had appointed custodian of the collection of MSS. that he gave to San Marco in Florence when the Dominicans took possession. As it happened Parentucelli himself was in the last year of his life when he ascended the throne of St. Peter, and his schemes, whether for the aid and development of scholarship or art, saw no fruition. But for all that Nicholas V. ruled for no more than eight years in Rome, he did much for Fra Angelico, who painted the frescoes in the Pope's private studio, and decorated a chapel in St. Peter's that was afterwards destroyed. This loss is of course a very serious one, and suggests that those who ruled in the Vatican were not always as careful as they might have been of works that would have outlived them so long had they been fairly treated. It is very unfortunate that art should suffer from the caprices of the unintelligent. When Savonarola, also a Dominican monk, roused the Florentines to a sense of their lapses from grace a few years after Fra Angelico's death, they made a bonfire in the streets of Florence of art work that was considered immoral. To sacrifice great work in the name of morality is bad enough, to destroy it for the sake of building operations is quite unpardonable.

In Rome the summer heat is well-nigh unbearable. Even to-day the voluntary prisoner of the Vatican retires to a villa in the far end of his gardens towards the end of June, and none who can leave the city cares to remain in it when May has gone, and the Tiber becomes a thread, and fever haunts its banks. Fra Angelico felt the burden of the summer and wished to suspend his work for a while. It so happened that he received an invitation from Orvieto to decorate the Duomo there during the months of June, July, and August. The first arrangement was that he should go there every summer to escape the dog-days in Rome, but for reasons not known to us the visit did not extend beyond one year, and the frescoes that he had painted were seriously injured by rain, and were not completed until Luca Signorelli took them in hand half a century later. The little work that is attributed to the painter's brush to-day in Orvieto need not detain us here.

The frescoes in Rome represent the summit of Fra Angelico's achievement, but they have not escaped the somewhat destructive hand of nineteenth-century German criticism; one eminent authority having declared that they are not by Fra Angelico at all, but have been painted by pupils, Benozzo Gozzoli receiving special mention in this connection. It is not necessary to take this criticism too seriously. The hands may be the hands of Esau, but "the voice is Jacob's voice." The artist may have received some assistance from pupils, the backgrounds may owe something to another hand; there was no feeling, ethical or artistic, to keep assistants from coming to the aid of their master, but the whole composition and the whole feeling of the frescoes proclaim the friar. The subjects are incidents in the life of St. Stephen and St. Lorenzo, ending, of course, after the inevitable fashion of the time, with a representation of the martyrdom. For once these martyrdoms have a suggestion of reality. In the early days of Fra Angelico's work his representations of martyrdoms and suffering were so naïve that they could hardly do more than provoke a smile. His idea of hell was very simple, and when he wished to be very bitter indeed--to express his anger at its fullest--he peopled the nether world with brothers of the great rival order of St. Francis. For the founder of that order, Angelico had the greatest love and admiration; who indeed could refuse to pay such tribute even to-day? But all the brethren did not live up to the rule of their founder, and the Dominican painter's rebuke seems very quaint in our eyes, though doubtless it made a great sensation when it was administered.

In Rome the painter's feeling for natural beauty reaches the height of its expression, indeed one feels that every department of his work is at its best and highest there. After his departure from the Eternal City, the frescoes finished, and himself on the shady side of his sixtieth year, the intervening centuries descend like a cloud, blotting out the greater part of the record. The cloud lifts for a moment to show us "Beato" Angelico, Prior of the Dominican Monastery at Fiesole, to which more than forty years ago he had claimed admission as a novice, and then he is back again in Rome in the chief convent of his order, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. There the light that had burned so brilliantly for nearly half a century, illuminating the most alluring aspects of the Christian faith, paled and went out. The body was laid to rest in the convent Church, near the tomb of St. Catherine, and it is said that the epitaph was composed by the Pope. Thereafter the order of St. Dominic produced no great personality until it gave to the world a man of very different stamp in Fra Girolamo Savonarola.

V

A RETROSPECT

In art as in music and literature the path of the innovator is beset by difficulties, and if, among all the movements that claim our attention to-day, that of the Renaissance in fifteenth-century Italy is the most fascinating, it is because the difficulties were conquered so brilliantly. The century seemed to breed a race of men that enjoyed the inestimable advantage of knowing what they wanted, and were determined to succeed. It did not matter that the paths they trod were new. Each man had mapped out a line of development for himself and went strenuously along his chosen road, quite certain that he would find the goal of his ambition at the journey's end. Curiously enough when the paths were those of conquest there was always a road leading from them to patronage of the arts. This may be because art in those days was largely devoted to the service of the Church, and when a man had acquired all that theft or conquest could give him, and realised that he could not hope to wage successful war upon time, he began to think of his latter days. Few men of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could approach death with confidence, and they sought to put something to their credit against the Day of Judgment. To beautify religious houses, to build houses for Holy Brotherhoods, these were the simplest and most obvious ways of placating the Recording Angel, and to the uneasiness of rich and unscrupulous men the Church owes not a few of her most remarkable monuments. Moreover, even the tyrants wished to have some enduring memorial. Cosimo di Medici, who gave San Lorenzo and San Marco to Florence, remarked to his historian Bisticci, "Fifty years will not pass before we are driven out of Florence, but these buildings will remain." After all we can forget and forgive the superstition and self-glorification that gave so much enduring wealth to the great cities of Italy.