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School of Art
Aberystwyth University
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1NG

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622460

Fax: +44 (0)1970 622461

Email: artschool@aber.ac.uk

Display artist/maker:

Fra Angelico

Born: c.1395, Italy, Vicchio nell Mugello Died: 1455, Rome

Painter and illuminator. Began his career as a journeyman manuscript illustrator. Employed as a fresco painter for the Dominican Friary of Cortona, 1408 to 1418. Moved to the Convent of Fiesole, 1418, where he painted a number of frescoes and the altarpiece . Took religious orders and the new name of Fra Giovanni di Fiesole,1423. Moved to the newly-built Friary of San Marco in Florence,1436, and managed the largest and most prestigious workshop in the region, travelling extensively for commissions.This bought him into contact with a wealthy patron, Cosimo de' Medici, who used the friary as a retreat. Giorgio Vasari, in his 'Lives of the Artists', (pub,1568), who bestowed upon the painter the name ‘Angelico’ (the angelic one) states that it was Cosimo who paid for the monastical decorations. In 1445 Pope Eugenius IV commissioned the frescoes in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter's, later demolished by Pope Paul III. Returned to the Vatican to design the frescoes for the Niccoline Chapel for Pope Nicholas V ,1447-1449. Worked in Fiesole as Prior from1449 until 1452. Died whilst working in Rome, 1455. Beatified 1982, and named Patron Saint of Catholic Artists in1984 . Fra Angelico worked within a time of artistic change. His early works were strongly allied to the International Gothic movement, but he was later influenced by Rennaissance artists such as Masaccio (1401 –1428).His 'Deposition from the Cross' (1443) is noted as the first painting to depict a realistially composed linear perspective