Nearly a hundred years had passed by since Giotto lived and worked in
Florence, and in the same hilly country where he used to tend his sheep
another great painter was born.
Many other artists had come and gone, and had added their golden links
of beauty to the chain of Art which bound these years together. Some
day you will learn to know all their names and what they did. But now
we will only single out, here and there, a few of those names which are
perhaps greater than the rest. Just as on a clear night, when we look
up into the starlit sky, it would bewilder us to try and remember all
the stars, so we learn first to know those that are most easily
recognised--the Plough, or the Great Bear, as they shine with a clear
steady light against the background of a thousand lesser stars.
The name by which this second great painter is known is Fra Angelico,
but that was only the name he earned in later years. His baby name was
Guido, and his home was in a village close to where Giotto was born.
He was not a poor boy, and did not need to work in the fields or tend
the sheep on the hillside. Indeed, he might have soon become rich and
famous, for his wonderful talent for painting would have quickly
brought him honours and wealth if he had gone out into the world. But
instead of this, when he was a young man of twenty he made up his mind
to enter the convent at Fiesole, and to become a monk of the Order of
Saint Dominic.
Every brother, or frate, as he is called, who leaves the world and
enters the life of the convent is given a new name, and his old name is
never used again. So young Guido was called Fra Giovanni, or Brother
John. But it is not by that name that he is known best, but that of Fra
Angelico, or the angelic brother--a name which was given him afterwards
because of his pure and beautiful life, and the heavenly pictures which
he painted.
With all his great gifts in his hands, with all the years of youth and
pleasure stretching out green and fair before him, he said good-bye to
earthly joys, and chose rather to serve his Master Christ in the way he
thought was right.
The monks of St. Dominic were the great preachers of those days--men
who tried to make the world better by telling people what they ought to
do, and teaching them how to live honest and good lives. But there are
other ways of teaching people besides preaching, and the young monk who
spent his time bending over the illuminated prayer-book, seeing with
his dreamy eyes visions of saints and white-robed angels, was preparing
to be a greater teacher than them all. The words of the preacher monks
have passed away, and the world pays little heed to them now, but the
teaching of Fra Angelico, the silent lessons of his wonderful pictures,
are as fresh and clear to-day as they were in those far-off years.
Great trouble was in store for the monks of the little convent at
Fiesole, which Fra Angelico and his brother Benedetto had entered.
Fierce struggles were going on in Italy between different religious
parties, and at one time the little band of preaching monks were
obliged to leave their peaceful home at Fiesole to seek shelter in
other towns. But, as it turned out, this was good fortune for the young
painter-monk, for in those hill towns of Umbria where the brothers
sought refuge there were pictures to be studied which delighted his
eyes with their beauty, and taught him many a lesson which he could
never have learned on the quiet slopes of Fiesole.
The hill towns of Italy are very much the same to-day as they were in
those days. Long winding roads lead upwards from the plain below to the
city gates, and there on the summit of the hill the little town is
built. The tall white houses cluster close together, and the
overhanging eaves seem almost to meet across the narrow paved streets,
and always there is the great square, with the church the centre of all.
It would be almost a day's journey to follow the white road that leads
down from Perugia across the plain to the little hill town of Assisi,
and many a spring morning saw the painter-monk setting out on the
convent donkey before sunrise and returning when the sun had set. He
would thread his way up between the olive-trees until he reached the
city gates, and pass into the little town without hindrance. For the
followers of St. Francis in their brown robes would be glad to welcome
a stranger monk, though his black robe showed that he belonged to a
different order. Any one who came to see the glory of their city, the
church where their saint lay, which Giotto had covered with his
wonderful pictures, was never refused admittance.
How often then must Fra Angelico have knelt in the dim light of that
lower church of Assisi, learning his lesson on his knees, as was ever
his habit. Then home again he would wend his way, his eyes filled with
visions of those beautiful pictures, and his hand longing for the
pencil and brush, that he might add new beauty to his own work from
what he had learned.
Several years passed by, and at last the brothers were allowed to
return to their convent home of San Dominico at Fiesole, and there they
lived peaceably for a long time. We cannot tell exactly what pictures
our painter-monk painted during those peaceful years, but we know he
must have been looking out with wise, seeing eyes, drinking in all the
beauty that was spread around him.
At his feet lay Florence, with its towers and palaces, the Arno running
through it like a silver thread, and beyond, the purple of the Tuscan
hills. All around on the sheltered hillside were green vines and
fruit-trees, olives and cypresses, fields flaming in spring with
scarlet anemones or golden with great yellow tulips, and hedges of
rose-bushes covered with clusters of pink blossoms. No wonder, then,
such beauty sunk into his heart, and we see in his pictures the pure
fresh colour of the spring flowers, with no shadow of dark or evil
things.
Soon the fame of the painter began to be whispered outside the convent
walls, and reached the ears of Cosimo da Medici, one of the powerful
rulers of Florence. He offered the monks a new home, and, when they
were settled in the convent of San Marco in Florence, he invited Fra
Angelico to fresco the walls.
One by one the heavenly pictures were painted upon the walls of the
cells and cloister of the new home. How the brothers must have crowded
round to see each new fresco as it was finished, and how anxious they
would be to see which picture was to be near their own particular bed.
In all the frescoes, whether he painted the gentle Virgin bending
before the angel messenger, or tried to show the glory of the ascended
Lord, the artist-monk would always introduce one or more of the
convent's special saints, which made the brothers feel that the
pictures were their very own. Fra Angelico had a kind word and smile
for all the brothers. He was never impatient, and no one ever saw him
angry, for he was as humble and gentle as the saints whose pictures he
loved to paint.
It is told of him, too, that he never took a brush or pencil in his
hand without a prayer that his work might be to the glory of God. Often
when he painted the sufferings of our Lord, the tears would be seen
running down his cheeks and almost blinding his eyes.
There is an old legend which tells of a certain monk who, when he was
busily illuminating a page of his missal, was called away to do some
service for the poor. He went unwillingly, the legend says, for he
longed to put the last touches to the holy picture he was painting; but
when he returned, lo! he found his work finished by angel hands.
Often when we look at some of Fra Angelico's pictures we are reminded
of this legend, and feel that he too might have been helped by those
same angel hands. Did they indeed touch his eyes that he might catch
glimpses of a Heaven where saints were swinging their golden censers,
and white-robed angels danced in the flowery meadows of Paradise? We
cannot tell; but this we know, that no other painter has ever shown us
such a glory of heavenly things.
Best of all, the angel-painter loved to paint pictures of the life of
our Lord; and in the picture I have shown you, you will see the tender
care with which he has drawn the head of the Infant Jesus with His
little golden halo, the Madonna in her robe of purest blue, holding the
Baby close in her arms, St. Joseph the guardian walking at the side,
and all around the flowers and trees which he loved so well in the
quiet home of Fiesole.
He did not care for fame or power, this dreamy painter of angels, and
when the Pope invited him to Rome to paint the walls of a chapel there,
he thought no more of the glory and honour than if he was but called
upon to paint another cell at San Marco.
But when the Pope had seen what this quiet monk could do, he called the
artist to him.
'A man who can paint such pictures,' he said, 'must be a good man, and
one who will do well whatever he undertakes. Will you, then, do other
work for me, and become my Archbishop at Florence?' But the painter was
startled and dismayed.
'I cannot teach or preach or govern men,' he said, 'I can but use my
gift of painting for the glory of God. Let me rather be as I am, for it
is safer to obey than to rule.'
But though he would not take this honour himself, he told the Pope of a
friend of his, a humble brother, Fra Antonino, at the convent of San
Marco, who was well fitted to do the work. So the Pope took the
painter's advice, and the choice was so wise and good, that to this day
the Florentine people talk lovingly of their good bishop Antonino.
It was while he was at work in Rome that Fra Angelico died, so his body
does not rest in his own beloved Florence. But if his body lies in
Rome, his gentle spirit still seems to hover around the old convent of
San Marco, and there we learn to know and love him best. Little wonder
that in after ages they looked upon him almost as a saint, and gave him
the title of 'Beato,' or the blessed angel-painter.