Wednesday, June 24, 2009



Blessed Fra Angelico: Artist and holy man

The mood in the city of Rome has become festive in light of a gala displaying the most important works of the Blessed Fra Angelico. This impressive gallery will be open to the public until the 5th of July in the Capitoline Museums, with displays of exquisite altarpieces, chapels, and triptychs.

Fra Angelico very skillfully combined the wealth of the Gothic style with the realism of the Renaissance, and his use of color made it so that his work would shine intensely with emotion.

The exhibition, called "The Blessed Angelico and the Dawn of the Renaissance", puts on display St. Francis receiving the stigmata and the Martyrdom of St. Peter, the Annunciation from Dresden, fragments of St. John the Baptist from Leipzig, and a section of the Annalena altarpiece now in Zurich, among others.

Many of his unknown works are being shown, including the Imago pietatis on parchment from a private collector in Turin and the two side panels of a triptych showing the Blessed and the Damned.

This Italian painter, called angelic and blessed for his religious themes and his well-known sanctity, knew how to combine his life as an artist with that of a Dominican friar. He was beatified as Blessed Fra Angelico by John Paul II in 1982.

Watch a short video of Fra Angelico's paintings here: 
http://www.h2onews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19034&catid=51&Itemid=14

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