Fra Angelico Galleries b.c. 1400, Vicchio, Florence d.Feb. 18, 1455, Rome Fra Angelico (c. 1395 ?C February 18, 1455), born Guido di Pietro, was an Early Italian Renaissance painter, referred to in Vasari's Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". Known in Italy as il Beato Angelico, he was known to his contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Brother John from Fiesole). In Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, written prior to 1555, he was already known as Fra Giovanni Angelico (Brother Giovanni the Angelic One). Within his lifetime or shortly thereafter he was also called Il Beato (the Blessed), in reference to his skills in painting religious subjects. In 1982 Pope John Paul II conferred beatification, thereby making this title official. Fiesole is sometimes misinterpreted as being part of his formal name, but it was merely the name of the town where he took his vows, used by contemporaries to separate him from other Fra Giovannis. He is listed in the Roman Martyrology as Beatus Ioannes Faesulanus, cognomento Angelicus??"Blessed Giovanni of Fiesole, nicknamed Angelico". Fra Angelico was working at a time when the style of painting was in a state of change. This process of change had begun a hundred years previous with the works of Giotto and several of his contemporaries, notably Giusto de' Menabuoi, both of whom had created their major works in Padua, although Giotto was trained in Florence by the great Gothic artist, Cimabue, and painted a fresco cycle of St Francis in the Bardi Chapel in Santa Croce. Giotto had many enthusiastic followers, who imitated his style in fresco, some of them, notably the Lorenzetti, achieving great success.  Related Paintings of Fra Angelico :. | Story of St Nicholas | Communion of the Apostles | Detail. of the Linaiuoli Triptych | View of the Convent of San Marco | The Coronation of the Virgin (mk05) |
Related Artists:
AMBERGER, Christoph
German Painter, ca.1500-1562 German painter and draughtsman. His family came from the Upper Palatinate. He served his apprenticeship in Augsburg, probably with Leonhard Beck, whose daughter Barbara he married. He became a master on 15 May 1530 but rarely signed his work. He was in northern Italy and Venice c. 1525-7. His full-length pendant portraits of a husband and wife (both 1525; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) show Venetian influence, and the portrait of Anton Welser (1527; priv. col., see 1980 exh. cat., p. 98) is in the Italian style. According to Sandrart, during the Imperial Diet of 1530 in Augsburg Amberger painted a portrait of Emperor Charles V to the Emperor's satisfaction, but the surviving work (Berlin, Gem?ldegal.) dates from 1532, based on the age given. In the decades that followed, Amberger was the favourite portrait painter of ambitious merchant families, such as the Fugger, who belonged to guilds but were connected with the nobility by family or marriage ties.
Hirshfield Morris
American artist 1872-1946 American painter of Russian-Polish origin. He claimed to have carved wooden ceremonial objects as a young boy, but ceased to create until he retired from his clothing manufacturing concern and began to paint. When Sidney Janis was arranging an exhibition of American folk art for MOMA in 1939, he saw Hirshfield's naive works in a gallery in New York. He exhibited two in the show and organized a one-man show for the artist in 1943; he also purchased two works, including Beach Girl (1937; New York, MOMA). In such paintings Hirshfield based large areas of the overall design on the fabrics with which he worked during his years in business, and his outlined forms on the art of patternmaking.
Lower Rhenish School
early fifteenth century