The Italian painter Fra Angelico (ca. 1400-1455) achieved a unique synthesis of the mystical, visionary realms of medieval devotional painting with the Renaissance concern for representing the visually perceived world of mass, space, and light.

The monastic life of Fra Angelico began about 1418 in the Order of Dominican Preachers in Fiesole, near Florence. His secular name had been Guido di Pietro, and his monastic name was Fra Giovanni da Fiesole. The appellatives Fra Angelico and Beato Angelico came into use only after his death to recall his spirituality as a man and an artist.

The painter's earliest known works were created at the monastery of S. Domenico at Fiesole in the late 1420s and early 1430s. The Annunciation of about 1430 (Museo del Gesù, Cortona) and the Linaiuoli Altarpiece (Madonna of the Linen Guild, Museo di S. Marco, Florence) reveal the essential directions of Fra Angelico's art. Reminiscences...