Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/144

114 was to receive a salary of 200 ducats, seven ducats a month for his assistant Benozzo, and three ducats each for his apprentices, as well as lodging, bread and wine, and the cost of scaffolding and colour. In fulfilment of this contract, Angelico remained at Orvieto till the 28th of September, and, with Benozzo's help, painted the groups of prophets and Christ in Glory on the triangular compartments of the chapel roof. Then he returned to Rome, where he spent the next three years in decorating the Pope's Oratory (or Studio, as it is called in the Vatican records), with scenes from the life of St. Stephen and of St. Laurence. These frescoes, which Fra Angelico painted when he was over sixty, reveal an extraordinary advance, not only in technical skill, chiaroscuro and modelling, but in freedom and dramatic power. The sight of the Eternal City, and the fresh experiences of these last years, had given the friar of San Marco a wider vision and more intimate knowledge of humanity than he had ever known before. The women and children who sit at the feet of Stephen, and listen to his impassioned words, the sick and lame who beg alms of Laurence, and the boys struggling playfully over the coins, have the old grace and charm, together with a life and animation that are altogether new. The classical details of the architecture, the stately columns and sculptured frieze, the statues and mouldings of the cornices, all bear witness to a close study of the antique models which Rome supplied in such abundance; while the landscape background of the Stoning of Stephen is an evident recollection of the hill country round Cortona, those familiar scenes of the Dominican master's youth,