Fra Angelico was an Early Italian Renaissance painter described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He was known to contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Brother John of Fiesole) and Fra Giovanni Angelico (Angelic Brother John). In modern Italian he is called il Beato Angelico (Blessed Angelic One); the common English name Fra Angelico means the "Angelic friar".
Fra Angelico was working at a time when the style of painting was in a state of change. This process of change had begun a hundred years previous with the works of Giotto and several of his contemporaries. Fra Angelico combined the influence of the elegantly decorative Gothic style of Gentile da Fabriano with the more realistic style of such Renaissance masters as the painter Masaccio and the sculptors Donatello and Ghiberti—all of whom worked in Florence. Angelico was also aware of the theories of perspective proposed by Leon Battista Alberti. Thanks to this mixture of styles and influences, today, we can show you this beautiful Angel—painted in a very realistic manner, but with a golden background, typical for Gothic art.
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