On the threshold of the Renaissance stands Fra Angelico (1387-1455),
who was trained in the school of miniaturists and influenced by Lorenzo
Monaco and Masaccio. His life was devoted to “the service of God, the
benefit of the world, and his duty towards his neighbour,” as Vasari
says. He regarded painting as one of the duties of the monastic life,
and never began to paint without first kneeling in prayer. His pictures
are aspirations towards heaven, while the figures with which he peoples
his saintly compositions have faces which show peace, joy, hope,
and communion with God. They are clothed in draperies of the purest
colours, crowned with glories of burnished gold, but are never dramatic
in their action. One of his best easel paintings outside Florence,
where alone his art can be adequately studied, is his early _Coronation
of the Virgin_ (No. 1290). This imposing, if overcrowded, composition
is painted to the glory of God and in honour of the Dominican Order,
to which the painter belonged. In the right bottom corner we see St.
Agnes with her lamb, next to her St. Catherine with her wheel, above
is St. Lawrence with his gridiron, and to the latter’s right St. Peter
Martyr in Dominican robes and with wounded head. In the foreground
kneels St. Mary Magdalene in red, her box of ointment in her left
hand. St. Nicholas with the three golden balls at his feet, St. Thomas
Aquinas in Dominican robes and holding the theological book from which
rays of golden light issue, St. Louis (Louis IX., King of France),
and St. Dominic himself—all help to swell the heavenly company. In
the predella, or lower part, of this panel picture are depicted
_Scenes from the Life of St. Dominic_, the founder of Fra Angelico’s
own Order: (_a_) Pope Innocent III. in his vision sees St. Dominic
supporting the falling Church; (_b_) the Pope receives, through the
agency of St. Peter and St. Paul who hand him a staff and the Gospel,
Divine authority to found the Dominican Order; (_c_) the Saint brings
back to life a young noble named Napoleon who had been trampled under
foot by a horse; (_d_) Christ in the tomb, the Virgin and St. John;
(_e_) St. Dominic challenges heretics whose books are consumed in the
fire, while his own book of the true Gospel issues forth unhurt by the
action of fire; (_f_) angels descend from heaven to feed the starving
monastery of St. Sabina at Rome immediately after St. Dominic has asked
a blessing; these two blue-clad figures are among the loveliest of all
Fra Angelico’s angelic beings, and perhaps the most inspiring figures
in the whole of the Louvre collection; (_g_) the death of the Saint at
Bologna and the passing of his soul up to heaven in accordance with the
vision of the monk at Brescia. This early Cinquecento panel picture,
which was formerly in the Church of S. Domenico at Fiesole, near
Florence, was painted before the Beato went to beautify the cells of S.
Marco with frescoes. It is one of the best of the primitive pictures in
the Louvre.
From the hand of the same saintly painter are the _Adoring Angel_ (no
No.), which until 1909 was in the Victor Gay collection, the _Martyrdom
of St. Cosmo and St. Damian_ (No. 1293), part of the predella of
a dismembered altarpiece, and the large fresco painting of the
_Crucifixion_ (No. 1294) which hangs on the Escalier Daru. The latter
was purchased, together with Domenico Ghirlandaio’s _Bottle-nosed Man_
(No. 1322, Plate III.), in 1879 for £1960. The _Beheading of St.
John the Baptist_ (No. 1291) and the _Resurrection_ (No. 1294A) are
unauthentic.
In Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1498) we have an assistant and follower
of Fra Angelico. He worked at different towns in Italy, notably at
Montefalco, Orvieto, Florence, San Gimignano, Rome, and Pisa, where
he died. Although his earlier work reminds us of Fra Angelico, than
whom he is much more dramatic and much less spiritual, in later life
he depicts the costumes and life of his time in a more realistic and
objective manner. His _Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas_ (No. 1319),
which originally hung in the Cathedral at Pisa, deals with a subject
often met with in the art of the period. The great Dominican teacher,
whom the heathen philosophers, Aristotle on the left, and Plato on
the right, recognise as their master in philosophy, is enthroned, his
books of theological learning on his knees. At his feet, subdued, is
Guillaume de St. Amour, the author of a book entitled _De Periculis
Novissimorum Temporum_, in which he exposed the various abuses then
prevalent among the mendicants. The dramatic action seen in the lower
part of the panel embraces Pope Alexander IV. presiding over the
religious council of Agnani, and the envoys of St. Louis (Louis IX. of
France) who took steps to end the religious conflicts of 1256. A large
altarpiece (No. 1320) representing the _Madonna and Child Enthroned_,
_St. Cosmo_, _St. Damian_, _St. Jerome_, _St. John the Baptist_, _St.
Francis d’Assisi_, and _St. Lawrence_ in the central panel is also
assigned to Benozzo. The frame also contains seven predella pictures,
and at either end is the coat of arms of the Medici family.
The great French Museum, which is weaker than the National Gallery,
the Berlin Gallery, and certain other national collections in Italian
primitives, affords us no example of the art of Andrea del Castagno
(fl. 1410-1457), whose compositions are characterised by harsh colour,
hard lines, and crude forms. Nor do we find here any painting by that
very rare artist, Domenico Veneziano (1400?-1461), who, it has been
said, was the first Tuscan artist to work in an oil medium.