Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455) was born Guido di Pietro at Vicchio in the Mugello and was already working as a painter in Florence by 1418. By 1423 he had joined the Dominican convent of San Domenico at Fiesole, taking the name Fra Giovanni. He trained first as a manuscript illuminator, and as a young man worked on frescoes at the Dominican friary in Cortona as an assistant to Gherardo Starnina or one of his circle. In 1436 he moved with other friars to the new convent of San Marco in Florence, where, under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, he frescoed the cells, the chapter house and the head of the dormitory stairs. His San Marco Altarpiece of 1439 set the pattern for the sacra conversazione, with saints standing together in real space around the Virgin, a form later taken up by Bellini, Titian and Raphael. Called to Rome by Eugene IV, he later decorated the Niccoline Chapel for Nicholas V, and died in Rome in 1455. He painted only religious subjects, and was beatified in 1982. Five works here: The Annunciation, The Coronation of the Virgin, The Cortona Annunciation, The Deposition of Christ and The Mocking of Christ.