Beato Fra Angelico: Patron of Artists



On June 23, 1983, Pope John Paul II granted official cultus to Fra Angelico, who is now a Blessed with an office, a mass and obligatory memory (and now Patron of Artists). Fra Angelico, baptized Guido di Pietro, was born around 1400 in Vicchio, a Tuscan town near Florence. At the age of twenty, he entered the Dominican Order at the priory of San Domenico in Fiesole. He died in Rome on February 18, 1455 and is buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva where his tomb remains an object of veneration. Was this remarkable priest a painter of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance? The answer varies with the preconceptions of the critics, many of whom consider him a painter of transition since he immortalizes in color the genius of Aquinas and Dante as well as that of Raphael and Leonardo.

John Rubba, O.P. Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico has many names: Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, Fra Giovanni da Firenze, Guido di Pietro in secular life, "Angelico", which became attached to him as an official nickname after his death and could not be more appropriate (since never before or after has an art been more angel-like in its happiness and purity), unless the even later nickname "Beato" surpasses it in its combined suggestions of saintliness and a state of blessedness in life. Fra Angelico's life, by every evidence, ran its course without a question, without a doubt, in uninterrupted service to God in the exercise of a God-given talent. Fra Angelico managed, as if without trying, to simplify the sometimes rather fussy pageantry of late medieval painting without thinning it - he weeded it and gave it room to grow - and to unite heavenly sweetness with earthly truth as if any question as to their identity were ridiculous. Because of his gentleness, Fra Angelico is often underestimated as an artist even by his admirers, who tend to settle for his sweetness without recognizing his strength. Fra Angelico reconciled revolution and tradition by reconciling Masaccio's realism - the projection of figures in light and space on a monumental scale - with the essentially miniature technique of late medievalists such as his probable teacher, Lorenzo Monaco.

John Canady The Lives of the Painters

As a boy in the Jesuit Novitiate, we novices were given special permission from Fr. Arrupe, to make the "Long Retreat", (30 days) both years, during late September and October. Each time reading Holy Fr. Ignatius' autobiography, I heard his youthful words "What if I should be like St. Francis, what if I should be like St. Dominic?" as a kind of personal invitation or call for my whole life. For me the charism of the Jesuits is found in the Vision in the Chapel at La Storta, and the Jesuit vocation of bearing the Cross with the poor and the outcast. The Franciscan vocation is found at Mt. La Verna with Francis receiving the wounds of Christ and becoming the Alter-Christus, while still alive. The gift to his orders is to walk in life as Crucified/Resurrected beings, like the Seraphic Christ burning with love yet also on the Cross. I took Dominic for my confirmation name, and have been with him ever since, watching him too at the foot of the Cross, so exquisitely painted by Fra Angelico. Also watching him move in his Nine Ways of Prayer, watching his serenity in the midst of the religious disputes of his day, watching him near to the Mother of god with the Rosary. And then seeing how his vocation blooms in Catherine, Thomas, Hyacinth, Rose… Martin. I do not see this call as something that will be possible to accomplish, but as a way of movement of goal, which actually forms my life's work, inside and out. There is enormous tension and fire and peace in this way, but I love living inside of it as it constantly eludes me.

The Dominican motto "Contemplata aliis tradere" (to share what you have seen, have contemplated), reaches its zenith in Beato Angelico. The great contemporary mystic Adrienne von Speyr (+ 1967) sees Fra Angelico, while she is in an ecstatic state, being questioned by her spiritual director, and companion in mission, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar:

"I see him (Adrienne smiles). He loves the Way that leads to God and is held in a continual contemplation of this Way. His whole prayer lives based on his Way, and if he has joined an order and has chosen God at all, it is to remain in his Way. And if he paints, then he always paints this Way. The saints he paints, the angels he presents, are all for him the expression of this Way. And in everything he experiences - even theological, philosophical, even if it is something extreme that remains incomprehensible to him - he can apparently only concur if it can be brought into harmony with this Way. As soon as he comes to the Way, everything is clear to him, and he would be very capable of drawing very subtle distinctions. It is as if God had designated him to represent this Way to Him. So everything is also related that is given to him is contemplation, everything that he experiences in prayer and in daily life, everything is referred to this Way leading to God.

It is the Way of being like a child, of the childhood of God. It is so much his talent and corresponds to him so much that it chose him more than he it. But for him it is one with religion, with love of God. In his most inner essence, he is actually Franciscan, as Francis is represented in his youth (Fruhzeit). He is one of the smiling saints."

Adrienne von Speyr The Book of All Saints (in German)

Fr. William Hart Dominic McNichols
9 February 2003
Blessed Hermitess Maria of Olonets (+1860)





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Page Last Updated: March 9, 2003