Altogether, among all these figures we find scarcely four distinct types, if we take into consideration their more or less advanced years and the modifications resulting from the arrangement of their hair, their being bearded or shaven, and the pose of the head, front face or profile, which distinguishes them.

The only groups which are not of an almost uniform stamp are the angels, sexless youths for ever charming.  They are of matchless purity, of a more than human innocence in their blue and rose-pink and green robes sprigged with gold, with their yellow or red hair, at once aerial and heavy, their chastely downcast eyes, and flesh as white as pith.  Grave, but in ecstasy, they play on the harp or the theorbo, on the Viol d’Amore or the rebeck, singing the eternal glory of the most Holy Mother.

Thus, on the whole, the types used by Angelico are not less restricted than his colours.

But then, in spite of the exquisite array of angels, is this picture monotonous and dull?  Is this much-talked-of work over-praised?

No, for this Coronation of the Virgin is a masterpiece, and superior to all that enthusiasm can say about it; indeed, it outstrips painting and soars through realms which the mystics of the brush had never penetrated.

Here we have not a mere manual effort, however admirable; this is not merely a spiritual and truly religious picture such as Roger van der Weyden and Quentin Matsys could create; it is quite another thing.  With Angelico an unknown being appears on the scene, the soul of a mystic that has entered on the contemplative life, and breathes it on the canvas as on a perfect mirror.  It is the soul of a marvellous monk that we see, of a saint, embodied on this coloured mirror, exhaled in a painted creation.  And we can measure how far that soul had advanced on the path of perfection from the work that reflects it.

He carries his angels and his saints up to the Unifying Life, the supreme height of Mysticism.  There the weariness of their dolorous ascent is no more; there is the plenitude of tranquil joy, the peace of man made one with God.  Angelico is the painter of the soul immersed in God, the painter of his own spirit.

None but a monk could attempt such paintings.  Matsys, Memling, Dierck Bouts, Roger van der Weyden were no doubt sincere and pious worthies.  They gave their work a reflection of Heaven; they too reflected their own soul in the faces they depicted; but though they gave them a wonderful stamp of art, they could only infuse into them the semblance of the soul beginning the practice of Christian asceticism; they could only represent men still detained, like themselves, in the outer chambers of those Castles of the Soul of which Saint Theresa speaks, and not in the Hall where, in the centre, Christ sits and sheds His glory.