Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/130

102 be free from worldly cares, and that he who would do the work of Christ must live continually with him. He was never known to be impatient with the brothers—a thing to me almost incredible! and when people asked him for a picture, always replied that with the Prior's approval he would try and satisfy their wishes. He never corrected or re-touched his works, but left them as he first painted them, saying that such was the will of God. He never took his pencil up without a prayer, and could not paint a Crucifixion without the tears running down his cheeks. And the saints which he painted are more like saints in face and expression than those of any other master. And since it seemed that saints and angels of beauty so divine could only be painted by the hand of an angel, he was always called Fra Angelico."

But although this angelic painter—Angelicus Pictor, as he is termed by a Prior of Santa Maria Novella, who wrote in his life-time—was in sympathy with many forms of mediæval thought, it would be a mistake to suppose that he was a reactionary who carried on Giottesque traditions into the fifteenth century. When he entered the Dominican Order, at twenty, he had already served his apprenticeship in Starnina's shop, and had been closely associated with the leaders of the new movement. The sculptor Nanni di Banco, the precursor of Donatello and assistant of Brunellesco, was his intimate friend, and through him the young painter must early have been familiar with the aims and ideas of these men. At the same time he was brought into contact with Lorenzo Monaco, whose methods of colouring he adopted, and whose example may have decided him to enter the cloister.

Fra Angelico was born in 1387, at Vicchio, in Val