Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/137

1455] foot of the Cross, and St. Zenobius, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Bernard, S. Giovanni Gualberto, the founder of Vallombrosa, S. Romualdo the hermit, and St. Thomas Aquinas and S. Pietro Martire, stand or kneel in different attitudes of adoration. There is no attempt at dramatic representation, but every phase of devotion is set forth with Angelico's habitual mastery of expression, and the silent passion of love and yearning in the eyes of Francis is finely contrasted with S. Damiano's uncontrollable burst of anguish. In the venerable form of S. Cosimo, clad in deacon's dalmatic, we recognise the portrait of Angelico's friend, the sculptor Nanni di Banco, who had died nearly twenty years before.

In the cloisters, Fra Angelico painted smaller frescoes of the chief Dominican Saints, and above the Forestiera, where travellers were entertained, he set a beautiful lunette of Christ, the yellow-haired Stranger, with pilgrim's staff and goat-skin, being welcomed by two Dominican brothers, with the inscription: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The cells on the upper floor, formerly occupied by the monks, are decorated with sacred subjects, chiefly scenes from the life of Christ, intended to assist the devout meditation of the brothers. Many of these were hastily painted, and some are executed by the hand of inferior assistants, while all are badly injured; but they still retain a great measure of Angelico's peculiar charm. The study of the nude was unknown to him, and in knowledge of the human form he remains far behind