Annunciation. 1438-1445. San Marco, Florence, Italy.

“The large Fra Angelico in the Academy is as clear and keen as if the good old monk stood there wiping his brushes; the colours seem to sing, as it were, like new-fledged birds in June.” – Henry James, Italian Hours

“Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. […] He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra Angelico with a faint condescension.” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

The San Marco monastery in Florence is one of my favorite places in the world. Despite being located in the city center the museum is calm, a respite from the sweaty, tourist-crowded streets of a Florentine summer.I have a soft spot for museums that are dedicated to a single artist (the Rodin museum in Paris is another favorite and I can’t wait for Herzog and De Meuron’s new Goya museum to be finished). For anyone with my attention span, over-saturation is inevitable in any museum. But those with a more intimate scope at least allow me to leave feeling as if I’ve made some new and lovely acquaintance. I’ve managed to visit San Marco during almost every trip to Florence and over the years Angelico has shifted from acquaintance to old friend.

Each room of the cloisters is adorned with a fresco depicting a scene from the life of Christ. Italy does not lack for talented painters of religious subjects but there’s a simple grace unique to Angelico. I’ve been to Padua and I’ve been blown away by the force of Giotto’s chapel. That is not what you’ll find at San Marco. Angelico does not paint the fearsome Last Judgments and devils that you see in Giotto and other predecessors. In Angelico’s depiction of Christ being tormented, the demons are not blue creatures with fangs, but rather phantom hands. For Angelico the gruesome remains outside of the visible realm, in focus is the sacred.

Noli Me Tangere. 1437-1446. San Marco, Florence, Italy.

My first trip to New York coincided with a Fra Angelico exhibit at the Met, the most comprehensive collection of his paintings in fifty years. It was an unforgettable introduction to the variety of his work beyond my familiar, beloved frescoes. The Capitolini exhibit was advertised in the same way so I suspected it might be a repeat of the same exhibit and was excited to see the pieces again.

In fact, the collection was almost exactly the same but the curation was completely different. Both exhibits were arranged chronologically, a natural choice since Angelico is one of those comforting examples of an artist achieving mastery only after much time and practice. His angels of the 1420s and early 1430s are wooden and clumsy when compared to the San Marco frescoes in 1440. As I weaved my way through the Capitolini’s maze-like exhibit, the paintings became increasingly realistic and compelling.

The space was dark with deep blue walls and soft golden highlights hanging above each painting. I was at the museum late on a Wednesday morning and though there were plenty of other visitors, it was easy to score a few minutes alone in front of each of my favorite pieces. Two nuns in brown habits paused beside me to look at a Madonna and Child. They were visiting the exhibit for the second time and as I eavesdropped I learned that one of them had written a thesis on Angelico years ago, in university. Angelico is now known as “Beato Angelico,” after being beatified (the first step to sainthood) by Pope John Paul II in 1982. By all accounts he led a remarkably pious and devout life, worthy of his subject matter. One of the most well-known anecdotes comes from the 16th century biography by Giorgio Vasari, which states that Angelico always painted the Crucifixtion with “tears streaming down his cheeks.”*

Fra Angelico. Christ Crowned with Thorns. 1438-1439. Museo Civico, Livorno, Italy.

In both the Met and the Capitolini exhibits, you see a stronger, more vibrant side of Angelico than is apparent in the San Marco frescoes. Angelico’s rosy color palate and his predilection for painting angels often cause his work to be co-opted by Hallmark greeting cards. In fact, at many points in history he has been regarded with the “faint condescension” that Edith Wharton mentions in the quote at the beginning of this post. But there is a sincerity and strength to his lines that refuses to be saccharine. Even if he is named for the angels he so often paints, what I like most are his saints.

In the best of his Annunciations, such as the one in San Marco, Mary looks stricken and almost nauseous from the news Gabriel brings. To me, this seems an appropriate response to an unwanted, mystical pregnancy. Also remarkable is Angelico’s treatment of John the Baptist. Theologically, John isn’t the cuddliest saint. It’s easy to feel affection for St. Francis with his birds or Mary Magdalene, for centuries wrongly maligned as a whore. But John is trickier. The dressing in haircloth, casting down of sinners, and emphasis on austere living are a bit intimidating. Often depictions of John reflect this grim austerity.

Panel of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Dominic. C. 1430-1433. The Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA.

Instead, Angelico’s John is, for lack of a better word, companionable.  In an oil painting conversing with St. Dominic, he leans in and gestures with his hand in typical Italian fashion. In a 1440 altarpiece, he looks off to the side and shyly smiles as if at a private joke. As a child, my favorite story about John was that when the newly pregnant Mary greeted his mother he “leaped for joy” in the womb. This is the John the Baptist of Angelico’s paintings, a friendlier version who’s excited to have a cousin. Perhaps because he spent so much time painting devotionals, Angelico excels at infusing human emotion into the saintly figures that are too often shown as stoic vessels of piety.

Just before the end of the exhibit I spotted a small, almost hidden room to the right. Completely empty, it was pitch black except for the illuminated manuscripts along the wall. Most of the illustrations had been done by Angelico in the late 1420s; in the rich pastels and gilded accents you could see the style of the tempera and oil paintings he would do throughout the following decades. A small computer nearby guided you through the iconography of the manuscripts. I savored my final moments with Angelico there, reminded  by the hymnals and icons that at moments even old friends can surprise you.

“Beato Angelico: L’alba del Rinascimento” will be up at Rome’s Capitolini Museums through July 5, 2009. It is open Tues-Sun 9 am – 8 pm and tickets cost 6 Euros for just the exhibit, 9 Euros for the exhibit and the rest of the museum. www.museicapitolini.org for more info. Just below the Fra Angelico exhibit is the Museum’s cafe, complete with a panoramic terrace. Nice for a post-exhibit cappuccino.

If you happen to be in Florence you should visit San Marco, which only costs 4 Euros but has absolutely insane hours. From Monday through Friday it is open 8:15-1:50, on weekends and holidays it is open 8:15-4:50, the ticket office closes 30 min before the museum. BUT the museum is closed the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Sundays and the 2nd and 4th Mondays of every month. So check a calendar before you plan a visit.

Here are two wonderful reviews of the Met Exhibit: One from The New Yorker and the other by Arthur Danto at The Nation.

*Side note: When I googled to check my spelling of Vasari, I came across a book called “Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried In Front of Paintings.” This has to be one of the stranger histories published recently, even more than Petroski’s one on toothpicks.