CONTEMPLATING WITH FRA ANGELICO - Iain McKillop
INTRODUCTION
This study more relevant than just exploring how Art reflects reflect the history of Theology and the Church. There is a revival today in Christians using art for contemplation. Many talk of both secular and religious art giving them spiritual experiences, but often aesthetic responses are confused with the spiritual. True spirituality brings us and our thoughts before God in Spirit and in Truth. If we confuse aesthetic feelings with the sacred we’re in danger of a form of idolatry. But art can help us contemplate faith, so how do we reflect on Christian belief through images?
Early Dominican theologians had thought through many of these issues and wrote treatises on ways of using art for Christian contemplation. They influenced Fra Angelico’s creation of some of the most truly Christian contemplative works of Renaissance art. His apparently simple images were deliberately designed to encourage profound Christian devotion and quiet meditation. Much Christian art since has been influenced by him in some way, though pastiches of his work are often far weaker than his own pieces.
His paintings are not as simple as they seem but rooted in the developments of Renaissance art theory. He was a contemporary of revolutionaries in Renaissance art like Masaccio (1401-1428), Alberti (1404 -72), Brunelleschi (1377-1446) Ghiberti (1378/1455), and Donatello (1386-1466).
Renaissance writers promoted Fa Angelico’s spirituality: The title Fra Angelico ‘angelic brother’ was applied to him shortly after his death by fellow Dominican Fra Girolamo Borselli, (d.1497) in recognition of his sanctity. This term ‘beatus’/‘blessed’ was derived from Thomas Aquinas term for a state of grace enjoyed by the angels. Aquinas use it to describe “the ultimate perfection of rational or of intellectual nature” The prior of San Marco from 1444 Fra Giuliano Lapaccini described Fra Angelico as “the greatest master of the art of painting in Italy… a man of absolute modesty devoted to the religious life.”
Vasari, who had interviewed elderly people who still remembered Angelico, wrote: “Fra Giovanni was a man of the utmost simplicity of intention, and was most holy in every aspect of his life… renowned for the holiness of his habits… gentle, temperate, living chastely… humble, modest in all his works and conversation, fluent and devout in his paintings… He laboured continually at his paintings (and) used frequently to say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares or anxious thoughts in order to exercise his art by being occupied by thoughts of Christ … He altered nothing, (once finished) but left all as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of God... It is also affirmed that he would never take a pencil (brush) in his hand without first offering a prayer. He is said never to have painted a Crucifix without tears streaming down his cheeks... in the countenances and attitudes of his figures it is easy to recognise proof of his sincerity, his goodness, nobility and devotion of mind towards the Christian religion.”
(POPE-HENNESSY QUOTE)
Vasari is known for hyperbole, but the more critical 20th Century scholar John Pope-Hennessy wrote: “What cannot be denied is that the golden thread of faith runs through his work. There is no painter whose images are more exactly calculated to encourage meditation and to foster those moral values which lie at the centre of the spiritual life.” [1974 p.5]. After years of lobbying Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope Paul II on 3rd October 1982.
THE ARTIST’S LIFE
(SIGNORELLI PORTRAIT)
Fra Angelico’s real name was ‘Guido di Piero di Gino’. He was born around 1400 about 20 miles north-east of Florence and travelled to Florence to train as a painter about 1410/12 perhaps in the studios of Ambrogio di Baldese, the miniaturist Sanguigni. and Lorenzo Monaco. By 1417 he was already an established artist before he took holy orders.
(DEPOSITION / SANTA MARIA DEL CARMINE)
His spiritual commitment is seen early in his career. In 1417 he joined a Carmelite confraternity the Compagnia di San Niccolò Bari at Santa Maria del Carmine. Such confraternities were groups of lay and ordained, with similar spiritual aims, often in similar employment, meeting for support and encouragement in religious devotion. Sometimes they specialised in fostering particular spiritual practises: San Marco, where Fra Angelico later painted as a Dominican friar, supported several such confraternities.
Fra Angelico’s confraternity of 20 men, mostly Carmelite friars, was based on strict discipline, self-flagellation for penitence, and acts of charity. The Dominican reforming prior Giovani Dominici who promoted art as a spiritual exercise & means of contemplation was an earlier member from 1408, as were an Augustinian and an Observant Franciscan. Probably the spiritual emphasis of this confraternity, and contact with Dominican reformers, influenced Fra Angelico’s calling to take holy orders.
(FIESOLE)
Some time between 1419 and 1423 he became a novice in the reformed Dominican ‘Observant’ convent of San Domenico at Fiesole taking the name “Giovanni”. In his time Fra Angelico was known as ‘Brother Giovanni di San Domenico di Fiesole’ or ‘Giovanni da Fiesole’, but to save confusion I will refer to him throughout as ‘Fra Angelico’. He was probably ordained as a priest after about 5-6 years as a novice. By1436, he was ‘Vicario’ /vicar of Fiesole, responsible for managing the convent’s affairs.
(SAN MARCO)
In the same year 1436 his Order took over San Marco in Florence. In 1443 he was appointed ‘sindicho’ ‘bursar’, with control of San Marco’s finances. In 1450 he succeeded his brother as Prior of San Domenico at Fiesole for 2 years. There is also a tradition that he was offered the role of Archbishop of Florence, but turned it down, proposing Antoninus, Vicar of San Marco and former Prior of Fiesole. So we are not just looking today at the work of an artist, but a trusted man of God.
Monks running artists’ workshops were not uncommon: Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517). Two of the della Robbia family of ceramic sculptors, Marco and Francesco became friars at San Marco after Fra Angelico’s time, and Dominican Observant nuns in the 16th Century ran a terracotta sculpture workshop in Florence. Several Dominican nuns were painters.
Presumably as a Dominican Observant Fra Angelico would have been a preacher and teacher as well as an artist and priest. He painted prolifically, and produced many designs for assistants to complete. We don’t know how many assistants he had, but know several names. The most significant was Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-97) to whom he entrusted many important frescoes in San Marco and who became a court painter to the Medici.
At first Fra Angelico worked primarily for Dominican commissions, but he travelled widely for other major commissions, Brescia in 1432, Cortona (1438).
(PORTRAIT SIGNORELLI & ROME
He worked alongside Signorelli at Orvieto in 1446-7 and he travelled to Rome to work for 2 successive popes Eugenius IV then Nicholas V in c.1445-9 and c.1453-5. He died there on 18th Feb. 1455 at the monastery of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.
(Tomb)
Such was his reputation that he was not buried in the cloister with most of the monks, but in the church, facing the altar of Thomas Aquinas. (His tomb has since been moved). A life-size tomb effigy was commissioned from Isaia da Pisa who also carved the papal tomb for Eugenius IV. And the Master General of the Order composed his epitaph.
DOMINICAN CHARACTERISTICS
(SAN MARCO SQUARE)
To truly understand Fra Angelico’s work we need to appreciate its Dominican context. The Dominicans aren’t an isolated Order. Their study &contemplation were primarily devoted to preaching and teaching. The piazza in front of their convent of San Marco was a perfect venue for preaching. A bell supplied by their patrons, the Medici summoned people to open-air sermons.
(GROUP OF CELLS IN SAN MARCO)
Fra Angelico’s contemplative art had a double function: it encouraged the friars to contemplate spiritual truths so that they could then go out to preach and teach the truths of the Gospel to the community. The simple cells of the convent with their plastered walls, were designed as an ideal environment for study of scripture and visual contemplation without distractions. Humbert of Romans a 13th C master wrote: “To be a great preacher on must first be a great contemplative”. Fra Angelico’s murals were designed to promote this.
(SINGLE CELL IN SAN MARCO)
Each Dominican, following the example of Catherine of Siena, was required to have a private cell. The convent of San Marco has 44 cells, each with a fresco designed by Fra Angelico to encourage meditation. Novices’ cells had a crucifixion image, then they’d move to one with an image of a key Gospel subject, with which the friar would live for most of his monastic life. I wonder if part of their discipline was to never got bored with the one image but let it constantly challenge your thinking!
The earliest Dominicans avoided using art. In its first constitutions of 1220 and 1228 Dominic legislated against the use of grand art and architecture by the Order: “Let our brothers have moderate and humble houses, so that they should never burden themselves with expenses, nor that others, secular or religious, should be scandalised by our sumptuous buildings”.
In 1290 they relaxed policies about art and buildings, recognising that visual representations of faith could help their mission, and influence the environment in which they lived. Convents in cities like Florence used sacred art to influence the surrounding people and culture. Fra Angelico’s prior Antoninus of Florence particularly promoted this: San Marco became a cultural centre, though more simple than the main unreformed Dominican convent Santa Maria Novella.
From the late 13th Century the Dominicans played an important role in the development of sacred art. They didn’t just use paintings and sculptures in their churches and piazzas but also held up painted cloths to illustrate their sermons.
They were known for vivid language in their sermons &engaged the viewer’s emotions, through emotionally charged images. Fra Angelico’s images however are usually more subtle and quiet.
(SAN DOMENICO DI FIESOLE)
Fra Angelico joined the convent at Fiesole about 1419. As part of the reformed Dominican Order, the ‘Observants’, they strictly observed St. Dominic’s (1170-1221) original Order. The Observants were a relatively new group founded in 1390 by Raymond of Capua, the confessor of Catherine of Siena who was Master General of the Dominicans from 1380. Raymond’s assistant, Giovanni Dominici, was called to Florence in 1400 and he resolved to reform the priory of Santa Maria Novella, the powerful Florentine headquarters of the Dominicans which was almost a university of Neo-platonic thought.
Dominici concluded that a new Observant convent was needed to follow Dominic’s original intentions for the Order. So in 1405 the Dominican Bishop of Fiesole, about 4 miles north-east of Florence, gave the Order a vineyard beneath the town, in the solitude of the hills, where they built the Convent that Fra Angelico joined about 14 years later. At first just 13 brothers from Santa Maria Novella joined Giovanni Dominici at Fiesole and would walked daily into the city to preach. Dominici’s disciple, Antoninus, was Prior at Fiesole when Fra Angelico joined the Order.
(SAN MARCO)
Cosimo de’ Medici, who dominated Florence politically and financially, promoted several monastic reform groups, probably for political reasons, to keep the most respected preachers on his side, as well as for religious expediency, to relieve his soul of guilt. In 1436 Cosimo persuaded Pope Eugenius IV to evict the Silvestrines from the convent of San Giorgio sulla Costa in Florence on partly false claims of wealth, impiety, unchastity, and the squalor and disrepair of their church buildings. The Observant friars of Fiesole were given the church and monastery to rebuild as a new convent - San Marco, with financial support from the Medici. It became an important centre for reform, in the centre of the city. Through Antoninus and Fra Angelico and it also became important for the development of a Dominican form of devotional art.
Fra Angelico remained as a friar at Fiesole when a group moved to San Marco. He moved to work there sometime between 1439 & 1441. His paintings financed the Order, just as Fra Angelico’s brother Benedetto painted illuminated choir-books which were, for decades, a major source of income for the Fiesole friars.
{MADONNA OF THE SHADOWS}
In 1445 St Marco officially separated from Fiesole after a decade of shared governance. As with many reforming groups, it wasn’t long before tensions rose between the Observants at San Marco and those at San Domenico in Fiesole. The Fiesole brothers continued to embrace poverty while Antoninus believed that San Marco needed a cultural profile to influence the city. Fiesole saw the Florentine convent’s wealth as a betrayal of Dominic’s strict Order. Fra Angelico remained with the stricter Observants at Fiesole. This painting in a corridor fresco near the prior’s cell contains political reminders of the need for simplicity:
Dominic with Book in Madonna of the Shadows)
Fra Angelico painted a quote from the founder on a book held by Dominic: “Have charity, preserve humility, possess voluntary poverty. I call forth God’s curse and mine on the introduction of possessions into the Order.” In 1445 Fra Angelico re-joined his brother who became Prior of Fiesole. The wide recognition of his painting skills didn’t keep Fra Angelico in Fiesole for long. He was called to Rome by Eugenius IV late in 1445 or early 1446, and was still working there from the next pope Nicholas V when he died.
(SERIES OF PAINTINGS, SAN MARCO, FLORENCE)
Fra Angelico’s paintings in San Marco are among the great pilgrimage sights of Florence; even secular tourists often talk of them as emotionally and spiritually moving. You’d have to harden yourself not to see beauty in them and a reflection of the infinite behind their style and content.
FRA ANGELICO’S STYLE (RESURRECTION)
I want now to look at how Fra Angelico’s style communicates spiritual meaning. It might help us make & choose useful art today.
Sincerity – you feel that as a friar he believes what he is painting.
Simplicity – Although Fra Angelico’s figures are beautiful & elegant, they have a simple naturalism that suggests that their spiritual subject is real and not idealised. Though some are full of symbols or allusions, these aren’t overt, unlike the complex Neo-platonic or classical references in much Renaissance art.
Clarity – Here’s none of stylistic swagger or intellectual complexity of later Renaissance or Baroque art; Fra Angelico draws his figures with clear outlines, significant gestures, few irrelevant extra characters. He presents the scene clearly
and recognisably so what we are to contemplate is clear.
Colour – Colours are bright but un-showy, harmonious, peaceful, to stimulate us to look at them then contemplate.
Unostentatious style – These aren’t overwhelming huge artworks; they’re designed to speak to people’s souls and minds, not overpower the viewer. Fra Angelico is not being intellectually clever for its own sake, as in some Renaissance art. His style has a certain ‘manniera’/ ‘stylishness’, but conveys spiritual truth by beauty of form, gesture and colour not by showing how clever he is.
Humility – There’s a humility about his work: Fra Angelico didn’t aim to be a ‘superstar artist’ like Michelangelo, Raphael or Caravaggio. Much of his work was collaborative, designed for Christian contemplation, not the artist’s ego. Fra Angelico decorated some of the humblest cells himself, while many more prestigious cells or important subjects he gave to assistants.
The most elaborately decorated cell, reserved for private use by Cosimo de’ Medici, was surprisingly not decorated by the Master but by an assistant, probably the young Benozzo Gozzoli.
What mattered was the image’s meaning and what you found in contemplating it, not who painted it. This would have been against a patron like Cosimo’s normal way of thinking.
Beauty – The elegant figures reflect the Renaissance idea that the form of a person reflects their inner spiritual self, but unlike Filippo Lippi’s idealised Neo-Platonic Madonnas, Fra Angelico’s figures have a naturalism about them which helps us see them as real people with humanity. He may have derived ideas of beauty from the writings of Alberti, who distinguished between ‘beauty’ and ‘ornament’. Ornament was surface decorativeness, beauty was concerned with harmony of proportion and form.
‘DECORUM’ - The Renaissance aesthetic theory of ‘decorum’ says that style should be appropriate to subject-matter.
MICHELOZZO
Michelozzo the architect of the new convent of San Marco refined classical detailing and proportion to design buildings that reflected and promoted faith in the architecture’s simplicity, unity and harmony, to promote spiritual reflection.
Fra Angelico’s style of painting is similarly ‘appropriate’; its form matches its spiritual content and purpose.
Quiet – There is little over-dramatic emotion in Fra Angelico’s figures- Few are melodramatic - the dying thief and weeping Saint in the Crucifixion in San Marco Chapter House. This quietude encourages deeper reflection than over-emotionalism.
DEPOSITION
Even the Deposition, one of his most emotive works promotes reflection, not emotional anguish.
COMPOSITION - Fra Angelico was a master of composition, not with the drama or panache of later High Renaissance artists, but quiet harmony to draw you into quiet contemplation.
CONTEMPLATIVE - Possibly because the works developed from the painter’s own contemplative practice, Fra Angelico’s scenes can lead us fairly quickly into meditating on their spiritual meaning. They rarely contain extraneous distractions. His art was designed to quieten the thoughts, not over-stimulate them;
to aid depth of contemplation not to over-excite the mind with surface ideas. As contemplatives we’re not looking to excite our surface thoughts but reach into our souls and ask God to speak to our inner being. In other words, we are encouraged to look beyond the surface of the image, the story or the style, to find what God’s Spirit would teach us through the picture. This art is not meant to be admired as a ‘masterpiece’; it is intended as a window through which we reach towards deeper spiritual understanding.
DOMINICAN INFLUENCE ON FRA ANGELICO
CRUCIFIXION CHAPTER HOUSE DETAIL
The spirituality in Fra Angelico’s paintings was influenced by several Dominican scholars and teachers, notably:
Dominic’s teachings
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)
Catherine of Siena
Humbert of Romans (d.1277) 5th Master of the Order from 1254
Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1435) the Calmaldolise scholar who talked of art as “painted preaching” and introduced translations of many of the Greek Fathers to Renaissance thinking.
Reformist Dominican Preachers:
Giovanni Dominici (-1405)
Antoninus of Florence (1389-1459)
Manfredi da Vercelli (1414-23) Leonardo Dati (1414-25)
Thomas Aquinas 1225-74
Aquinas valued human creativity and art, recognising that images could encourage prayer. But art was a secondary activity and source: Art could point people towards spiritual subjects, but could not represent the immaterial: “what God is always remains hidden from us”. Meditation, he claimed, taught him more than books or scholarship. Contemplation for him was not about exploring mystical, abstract sensations. He encouraged mental discipline and meditative study which he said developed maturity, wisdom and understanding for teaching and preaching. The aim of contemplation isn’t to just build our own spiritual experience but to help others grow, passing on what we’ve learned. Thomas Aquinas’ motto was frequently printed on Dominican art: “Contemplata allis Tradere”/“to hand on to others what has been contemplated”. This was an aim of the San Marco frescoes.
No single source has been found for the subjects of Fra Angelico’s series of frescoes in San Marco but the subjects may relate to the 3rd Part of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1267-73) devoted to explaining the life of Christ.
DOMINIC READING
Aquinas wrote of developing the “penetrative gaze” in contemplation. When we contemplate we involve our imagination in the subject and let its spiritual meaning direct our prayer. He emphasised true ways of approaching images for use in prayer. Art is not reality; it can only contain fragments of truth about the unknowable. It should be beautiful, to encourage higher thoughts. The ugly should only be depicted if representing something intended to be morally repellent and thus repelled people from sin.
(DOMINIC ADORING THE CROSS CLOISTERS)
Images were not to be worshipped; they should be explored with deep thought, rather than adoration. Only God can be worshiped. Aquinas was careful to make distinctions between idolatrous worship (idolatria) and true worship (latria). He developed the terminology for different degrees of spiritual reverence using art from translations of John of Damascus and the statutes of the 2nd Council of Nicea. The Cross, he believed, had a power as a divine weapon against idolatry so encouraged ‘latria’ (worship of the God who provided salvation). Representations of Jesus in his human form demanded ‘hyperdulia’, the highest form of adulation. Images of the Virgin Mary too were to be venerated with ‘hyper-dulia’, in reverence for her role as mother of God. Image of the saints were to be acknowledged with less strong veneration:‘dulia’.
He wrote:“…there is a two-fold movement of the mind towards an image: one regards the image itself, as a particular object; another regards the image as the representation of something. And between these movements there is this difference: In the former one is moved (to appreciate the image) whereas the latter movement (appreciates the truth which the image represents). Therefore we must insist that no reverence is shown to Christ’s image as an object – for instance carved or painted wood… Reverence should be shown to its subject …as to Christ himself. Since Christ is adored with the adoration of latria (worship), it follows that his image should be approached with the adoration of latria (the worship of its subject, Christ”. (Summa Theologica 3,Q.35. Art.3)
The image draws worship to its prototype. The worshipper does not passively view a work of art, there is a movement of spirit within them to the image and through the image to the subject of worship.
HUMBERT OF ROMANS (d.1277) (CELL 37 ADORING THE CROSS)
The preacher and teacher Hubert of Romans, 5th Master of the Order from 1254, recommended directness of communication and unadorned language. Preachers, he said, should understand the symbols of faith in order to be able to teach them.
By symbolism he meant mostly biblical symbolism, but metaphysical visual symbols were also explained to help people understand faith. Symbolism was used practically not mystically. This may be why Fra Angelico paints subjects direct, not symbolic subjects. Humbert wrote in “Things that a Preacher Needs”: “Then there is knowledge of the church’s mysteries…The church is full of mystical symbols, and it contributes greatly to people’s education to have these expounded to them, and so it is helpful if the preacher understands them… The spirit of understanding…enables a man to understand what is hidden under the symbol, because to ‘understand’ means to ‘take your stand under’ the symbolic surface.”
(Humbert of Romans Things that a Preacher Needs IX:110, S. Tugwell: Early Dominicans: Selected Writings p217). In other words, if we’ve thought deeply through the subjects of faith, we can live by them and expound them with conviction.
KNEELING BEFORE CROSS
Contemplation, for Humbert and other early Dominican writers should concentrate, not on developing ourselves and our interior life but more on recognising our dependence on God. When early Dominicans used the term ‘contemplation’ they meant a process rather different from its use by the Carmelites. Contemplation reinforced scriptural and theological truths.
Art was used in prayer to re-enforce this. Hubert Order wrote of the necessity of contemplative prayer: “To be a great preacher one must be a great contemplative”. To be a great communicator of Christian truths one needs to reflect on their meaning and the most effective ways of conveying them.
Giovanni Dominici (ILLUMINATION)
Dominici, the founder of the Fiesole convent probably never met Fra Angelico, he lived in Rome when the artist joined the Order, but his writings & reputation would have influenced Fra Angelico.
Dominici regarded art as a Christian educational tool for the reform movement. In his 1403 Regola del Governo di Cura Familiare, Dominici advised parents to introduce children to Christian truth through pictures. He wanted to encourage visual literacy, especially where there was little verbal literacy. He believed that sacred images could be important for promoting and enhancing faith. Visual art was another way to augment teaching, preaching and written scholarship. Art was not ‘indulgence in vanities’, as Bernard of Clairvaux believed.
Giovanni Domenici also believed that creating sacred art was a useful spiritual discipline. He illuminated manuscripts himself as a devotional contemplative practice, using drawing as a spiritual exercise. This may have influenced Fra Angelico to use designing & painting as a spiritual exercise since both Angelico & his brother had trained in painting and illumination prior to joining the Order.
Dominici wanted to reform the subject matter of sacred art and scholarship; he rejected the Renaissance tendency to use pagan subjects as allegories for Christian meanings. He encouraged a return to portraying Christian subjects directly, which may be why what Fra Angelico’s art lacks ostentatious intellectual cleverness or classical allegory, instead painting directly the life of Christ and the saints.
ANTONINUS of FLORENCE
More directly influential on Fra Angelico’s spirituality and art would have been Dominici’s disciple Antonio Pierozzi (1389-1459) commonly called Antoninus the Latin name under which he wrote. (He was canonised in 1523 as Sant’ Antonio). Antoninus was prior at Fiesole during Fra Angelico’s formative time as a novice (1422-6) and founded San Marco, being prior there from 1439. He was also Vicar General of the Dominican Observant Friars in Tuscany (1433-46), an eminent thinker, writer and popular preacher, admired and sponsored by Cosimo de Medici. He became Archbishop of Florence between 1446 and 1459. It was probably he who guided Fra Angelico and Fra Cipriano the first prior of San Marco in the convent’s decorations and choice of Christological themes for the frescoes.
These frescoes on the cell walls seem to have been an innovation. At Fiesole the only frescoes & decoration had been in public rooms. Perhaps Fra Angelico’s gifts had some influence on the decision.
CELL SAN MARCO
Like Dominici, Antoninus believed that sacred art could inspire spirituality, encourage piety and devotion and convey teaching and doctrine. His treatise Summa Theologica, (completed in 1458 after Fra Angelico’s death) contains many passages on sacred art.
The Bible was of prime importance for contemplation but he valued art’s contribution in interpreting faith, teaching and encouraging prayer. The duty of artists, he wrote, was “to morally enlighten themselves and others”. Art could promote Christian truth, support teaching and help contemplation.
While he condemned grandly decorated convents and recognised that the constitution of the Observant Order demanded poverty, Antoninus believed that the construction of a convent in the heart of Florence required fine, harmonious architecture and art, so that the Order could speak into the culture of the city.
Observants were previously suspicious of art, seeing it as an extravagance. But Antoninus’ defence of art encouraged the growth of their use of images and refined architecture. As the Observant Orders expanded, their commissioning of altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts increased.
MADONNA OF THE SHADOWS
Like Domenici, Antoninus believed art needed reforming:
It was a betrayal of the gift of God, he believed for artists to create “precocious images, for their forms not for their beauty”. Religious art, he wrote should “avoid things that are curious and ill adapted to excite devotion, but tend on the contrary to promote laughter and vanity.” In other words religious art, as in that of Fra Angelico, should be simple, serious and devout, not ‘clever’ or ‘entertaining’. It should help people focus on God not become obsessed with artistry itself. Art should convey its message directly, not be over-full of superfluous extra detail or over-decoration.
Artists were required not to embellish their paintings with inappropriate figures or non-biblical scenes: “Nor are they to be praised who paint apocryphal tales, such as midwives in the nativity or the Virgin’s girdle thrown down by Thomas the Apostle during her assumption because of his doubt, and the like. To paint curiosities in stories of the saints or in churches, which have no value in stimulating devotion, but laughter and vanity, such as monkeys, or dogs chasing hares, or vain adornments of clothing, appears superfluous or vain.” (St. Antoninus c1458 Summa Theologica Pt. 3, Title 8, Ch.4, section 11)
ANNUNCIATION
Antoninus wanted Christian subjects to be conveyed realistically, not with unconvincing symbolism: The Trinity, he wrote, should not be represented with three heads, paintings of the Annunciation shouldn’t include the embryo Christ-child flying through the air or in Mary’s womb. This may account for the direct naturalism in Fra Angelico’s pictures; they are real people, not full of excessive background detail or extra figures which might distract from the message of the work.
Like Aquinas, Antoninus emphasised that art was only a means to worshipping God in spirit and in truth: “Images are not valuable in and for themselves, but because they move the worshipper beyond the representation to the object of worship.” “Holy images partake of the sacred by stimulating contemplation of higher things.”… “The priest himself is elevated to greater devotion as he looks upon an image.”…
GROUP OF CELLS
Antoninus probably helped Fra Angelico select fresco subjects for San Marco, and maybe how to represent them: Some frescoes denote the meaning of the room:
Over the door to the library Thomas Aquinas was depicted as the Dominican scholar’s supreme example, Doctor of the Church. Over the hostel for pilgrims was a painting of Christ as Pilgrim, welcomed by two friars. In the Cloisters St. Dominic Embracing the Cross and the Annunciation upstairs indicated by examples of piety, the limits in the convent where visitors could no further enter.
The Order’s constitution required the friars’ cells to contain images of the crucified Lord, Mary and St. Dominic as a focus for prayer and to be models to the friars. The Gospel subjects in the cells follow Antoninus teaching in ‘Summa Theologica’ that monastic discipleship should closely follow and resemble Christ’s life, teaching and example. He described Christ and Mary as “examples for our way”. Frescoes of Jesus’ life were intended to help both the friars’ devotion to Christ and commitment to living like him.
SINGLE CELL SAN MARCO
The cells of the reformed Observants were austere and undecorated apart from the mural, with plain plaster walls. Michelozzo made the San Marco cells of San Marco less cramped than the cells in many other monasteries, to encourage meditation and study. The pictures in each cell were not intended for decoration but as aids to meditation. The fresco and the window are on the wall opposite the door. It has bees suggested that they were both constantly visible spiritual exercises: the window looked onto the physical world to which the friar must minister and for which he prayed, the mural was a window into the spiritual world.
Both were part of the monk’s meditations: how should he relate spiritual truth to his physical world in his prayer and his ministry? How could he most meaning-fully preach the truths of Christ to the world he saw beyond the convent walls?
In our break perhaps consider how this relates to you?
What helps bring the stories and theology in scripture alive for you? Are there ways in which you could bring them more alive for others?
What helps you focus in prayer?
What might help you focus more intently on God in prayer?
Are images helpful or a distraction to you personally?
What sort of images most communicate to you?
Are you developing your spiritual understanding mostly for yourself or to be able to share faith in Christ more effectively with others?
SESSION 2 CONTEMPLATING THE ANNUNCIATION
(ANNUNCIATION)
Perhaps Fra Angelico’s most famous work is the Annunciation in the dormitory corridor of San Marco. Like the Madonna of the Shadows surrounded by saints, (in the north wing, outside the Prior’s cell), it was painted entirely by Fra Angelico. He created it after returning from Rome in 1450, so is in a more mature style than most of the frescoes in the cells. The colours and tones are heightened because the artist over-painted the fresco with tempera to strengthen the image.
What did it mean for the monks?
(PLAN)
The position of this painting is significant, at the head of the stairs to the dormitories with their different wings of separate cells for lay brothers, novices, friars and a special cell reserved for their secular patron Cosimo de Medici. Every member of the community would pass this mural over 30 times each day – on the way to and from church services, meals, work, preaching, study or ablutions. Like the large painting of Dominic embracing the Cross in the Cloister, this fresco marked a significant area in the convent. It was at the place where lay-brothers and visitors to the convent library in the North Wing were not allowed to enter further. So the painting gave a sense of specialness to its position.
(STAIRS) One even feels this today as you climb the stairs and see it ahead.
(CORRIDOR)
In modern theological terms this was a liminal space, a threshold between two different experiences. Friars passed it moving to their rooms, where the mural in their cells could take their meditations further into the meaning of Christ’s life, Passion and Resurrection and the Joys and Sorrows of Mary. This was a place of prayer between the wings of the dormitory. Its subject is also liminal spiritually, The Annunciation was a threshold, where earth and heaven met: Mary met the Angel, Mary, an example to each member of the Community, heard the message of God, and in human substance the divine Christ took form.
(INSCRIPTIONS)
The friars would gather here to pray and kneel to recite the Little Office of Mary in front of the fresco before descending to services. Its 2 inscriptions encouraged prayer: In majuscule lettering: “When entering and standing in front of the pure virgin do not forget to say “Ave”. In gothic lettering on the base of the loggia: “Hail, O Mother of Mercy and noble resting place of the Holy Trinity.”
(ANNUNCIATION)
Like the Franciscans the Dominicans claimed Mary as the patron of their Order. This iconography of the Annunciation is just one of several images of Mary which they developed.
(LEONARDO ANNUNCIATION)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation for Santa Maria della Grazie, Florence, another Dominican church used similar iconography.
Although images of the Virgin and the Annunciation were common in mediaeval and Orthodox art, the theological emphasis of the subject, affirming the humanity of Christ through his Incarnation was particularly significant to the Dominicans. Remember Dominic’s original mission was to convert the Cathars, whose heresies included denial that Christ was God in human form. The incarnation was not just at the centre of faith, it was central to the aim of Dominican preaching.
(ANNUNCIATION)
Peter of Verona the first Dominican Martyr had preached against Catharism in Florence in 1244, encouraging Florentines to hang holy images in their homes &at street corners and to sing ‘Laude’ before them to reflect on the truth of Christ’s Incarnation.
Peter Martyr’s teaching may have promoted the humanity with which the Virgin and Child were represented in Dominican art. Many images of the Madonna and Child commissioned for monastic cells were intended to encourage contemplation of the meaning behind God becoming human.
(DUCCIO MADONNA)
Duccio’s huge 1285 ‘Rucella Madonna’ in the Uffizi Gallery was a major Dominican commission to promote belief in the Incarnation. It hung above the ‘tramezzo’ screen in their mother church Santa Maria Novella, separating the laity from the friars to declare the true humanity of Christ to the world.
ANNUNCIATION
Antoninus the Prior of San Marco was spiritual advisor to a confraternity that emphasised Christ’s Incarnation: the ‘Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin Mary and Saint Zenobius’. In 1444, 6 years before this painting, the confraternity had moved from the Servite Church of Santissima Annunciata to a new chapel in San Marco built by Cosimo de Medici at the north-east edge of the 2nd cloister. The confraternity commissioned new artworks and manuscripts for the convent from Fra Angelico and Gozzoli and Biagia Sanguini the manuscript illuminator who trained and sponsored Fra Angelico in his earlier Carmelite confraternity
(SANTISSIMA ANNUNCIATA - ANNUNCIATION)
The subject of the Annunciation was special to Florence. Florence Cathedral was dedicated to Mary and one of the city’s most spectacular festivals was the Feast of the Annunciation. The Church of Santissima Annunciata in Florence, not far from San Marco (where the confraternity had originally been based), was famous for its 13th C painting of the Annunciation, which was thought to work miracles and heal people from infertility. It was also significant for artists, because it was supposed to heal blindness and had the reputation of having been painted by an angel. The original was badly damaged by fire in 1304.
REPLICA
Replicas of this image were commissioned for most Florentine churches, including a fresco on the entrance wall of San Marco.
(ANNUNCIATION ICON)
Like any Annunciation icon, its imagery primary emphasised the Christ’s Incarnation and Mary’s place in the theology of Salvation. As with icons, some Dominicans taught that the most sacred images weren’t created just from the imagination and design of artists. Some were thought to have spiritual power and communicate because they copied spiritually inspired prototypes. An early mediaeval tradition taught that an apostle, considered by some to be Luke, had painted Gabriel announcing Christ’s birth to Mary long before the writing of the gospels. The Dominican Fra Giordano da Rivolto (c1260-1311) preached in 1305 in Santa Maria Novella: “to begin with, all paintings came from the disciples: in order to provide the maximum amount of information the figures of the first saints were painted from life showing their appearance, their circumstances and the way they were. Thus we find that Nicodemus painted Christ on the Cross in a beautiful picture showing Christ’s appearance and bearing so that whoever saw the picture fully saw almost all the circumstances, so well have they been portrayed, because Nicodemus was present at Christ’s crucifixion…. Likewise we also find that St. Luke painted a portrait of Our Lady, showing her precisely as she was… The disciples made these paintings in order to give people the most accurate record of the events, so that these paintings, and especially the old ones which came from Greece are of great authority, because in them the many disciples who painted recount the said things. And they provided copies for the world, which possess great authority as great as that of books”
Another prevalent mediaeval traditions was that the Magi took a painter with them on their journey to record their finding of the Messiah. All this is of course rubbish, but it shows the significance given to images of faith. Some Dominican teachers like Jacobus de Lorraine who compiled the Golden Legend, a book of inspiring stories of the saints, relished such tales because they appealed to & convinced the masses. Other Dominican Reformers in the Observant Order in which Fra Angelico developed would probably have questioned such superstitions and legends. They emphasised the reality of belief, as appealed to by Fra Angelico’s realism.
(FRA ANGELICO ANNUNCIATION)
Fra Angelico interpreted the Annunciation in a new way. He repeated this composition in several versions, which may imply that he found the composition particularly inspired contemplation. He created a sense of space and simplified the composition. The space and clarity helps us contemplate Mary’s thoughts, her humility and her example to us as a real person and devout servant of God.
The Dominicans venerated Mary. Christ was to be worshipped. Aquinas’ taught that the Virgin Mary, exalted as the Mother of God, deserved to be venerated with the strongest adulation, ‘hyperdulia’. So, as the inscription required, you wouldn’t just pass the picture without taking notice. You would acknowledge Mary and reverence her as you passed for her role as mother and bearer of Christ who came through her to bring Salvation to the world and to you. The Liturgy of the Feast of the Annunciation (25th March) praised Mary as the “Source of our Redemption”. You had a personal relationship out of gratitude for her son’s gift of your Salvation. But she is simple, like you. Fra Angelico doesn’t enthrone her but sits her on a simple three-legged wooden stool, perhaps symbolising the Trinity. The third leg, Christ is as yet hidden.
(CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN, SAN DOMENICO)
As committed Catholics the friars would also believe and trust in Mary’s prayers for them & their work at Christ’s side in heaven, as emphasised in Fra Angelico’s paintings of the Coronation of the Virgin in Cell 9 and the altarpiece of one of the two chapels dedicated to Mary at St. Domenico, Fiesole (1427-9) now in the Louvre.
(CORTONA ANNUNCIATION)
Fra Angelico had already created several similar images of the Annunciation in his altarpieces for Fiesole 1425, Cortona c1432 and San Giovanni Valdarno. The main differences are: The angle of the Mary’s loggia, the figure in the roundel : God the father in Fiesole (Prado) and Valdarno, Isaiah foretelling the birth of the Messiah in Cortona, and the size of Adam and Eve in the background: Valdarno smallest Cortona slightly larger.
PRADO
The Fiesole figures were largest .
CORTONA ALTARPIECE
The most splendid was commissioned by a wealthy cloth-merchant and property-holder Giovanni di Cola di Cecco, for his tomb and sacristy chapel. Hence the splendour of the drapery of the Angel to express the cloth-merchant’s devotion.
Adam and Eve’s inclusion literally interprets Thomas Aquinas’ teaching about Mary, who he praised “as so full of grace that her flesh conceived the Son of God… She is the antithesis of Eve whose disobedience led to the Fall.”
ANGEL AND MARY DETAIL Antoninus wrote “the tongue of God spoke through the good word of the angel, so that in the virgin’s womb the word was made flesh… “I am saying to you ‘Ave’ (‘Hail!’) the complete opposite of whom is ‘Eve’ (‘Eva’ – whose name is the letters of ‘Ave’ reversed).
(SAN MARCO ANNUNCIATION)
In the San Marco fresco the angel’s wings are coloured with the multicolours of Aquinas’ descriptions of the creatures of Paradise.
Mary is shown in an enclosed fruitful garden, symbolic of her virginity. This is the enclosed a garden of the Song of Songs 4:12: “A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed”.
PRADO GARDEN
The emphasis is that trough Mary Christ brought about a return to the Edenic relationship with God from which Eve and Adam were expelled for sin. The three altarpiece gardens are full of symbolic plants, the discarded fruit of sin at their feet, showing their disregarding, as if trampling underfoot the Trinity, the lemon tree represents bitterness but promises healing, the white flowers are purity that will be restored under Mary’s Son.
SAN MARCO
The San Marco fresco has less botanic detail than the garden plants of the Cortona altarpiece, perhaps to not distract from contemplating the significance of the figures. The enclosed garden of Mary’s virginity was the subject of many mediaeval hymns, sermons, writings and commentaries. The Dominican theologian Albertus Magus (1206-80) in his encyclopaedia praising the Virgin wrote of the virginal garden as “sown with a mystical breath and its grasses shaded by cedars palms and cypresses.” This seems to be literally referred to in the trees in Fra Angelico’s background. Mary has protected and dedicated herself so the enclosed garden of her life could only be opened and entered by God the Lover. The picture encourages the friar & any Christian contemplative to similarly protect their life in holiness so they can be met by Christ & be useful to God.
(CORTONA ALTARPIECE DETAIL)
In the Cortona Altarpiece the Prophet Isaiah looks on from the roundel at the intersection of the arches. Isaiah 7:14 is the text on his scroll and on the book on Mary’s lap, which she has been contemplating: “the Lord himself will give you a sign: Look, the virgin (young girl) will conceive and bear a son and will call his name Immanuel, God with us.” PRADO ROUNDEL
In the other two altarpieces the figure of the Father watches all.
(ARCHITECTURE DETAIL)
The direction of the pink entablature of the arcade points directly to Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise in the distance. The influence of sin on human life would expel us from God’s presence, Mary’s obedience & her Son have restored us. The picture is reminding us that God is here in this place. But he is mysterious, not depicted as a figure, but a roundel, which may relate to Dominici and Antoninus teaching about not representing the divine too literally.
(DOVE)
In all the altarpieces and the San Marco Annunciation the dove of the Holy Spirit descends in rays of gold light or golden oriole. The swallow above in the Prado version (often a Franciscan symbol) may signify Jesus migrating from one dimension to another. The dove is more subtly suggested in San Marco, painted in translucent pigment above Mary’s head and now barely visible.
WORDS OF MARY CORTONA
The words of Mary interestingly emit from her lips in reverse as they are spoken back to the Angel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; Let it be to me according to your word.” I cannot find any precedent for this reversed lettering in other Italian art, though it is occasionally found in alchemical manuscripts.
(SAN MARCO ANNUNCIATION)
Fra Angelico seems to have learned from his former painting of the Annunciation for the San Marco Frescoes. He focused attention more internally on the meaning of the Annunciation. The friars would be meant to know the story and its theological implications. So he omitted the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the background and much extraneous detail.
DETAIL MARY’S DRESS AND WOMB
Mary’s dress was painted in similar diaphanous pigment to that used for the dove, perhaps to suggest the mystery contained within her womb: the Word become flesh. The line of Mary’s womb is slightly swollen, suggesting the presence of Christ within.
MARY IN ANNUNCIATION
Beyond the theology of Salvation & Incarnation in the Annunciation, Mary is also represented as our model as a faithful Christian. The picture grows out of the Dominican devotion to Mary, as an example for the believer. In his Summa Theologica Antoninus wrote of Mary as “an example for our Way.”“looking intently at Mary.. the priest is moved to consider how she formed the Word made flesh... and to contemplate his role in bringing for the, ever humbly, the Body and Blood of Christ from the substance of bread and wine… and carried the word of God in his preaching.” So before this painting we are meant to recognise that in this liminal space we consider our own mission and ministry.
The humility and willingness to serve in this scene is a model for our own vows of service, humility, chastity and poverty. Unlike the Cortona Altarpiece and the Annunciation fresco in Cell 3, Mary is not reading. She looks up from devout contemplation. As she is greeted by the Angel, her hands are crossed humbly above her womb. A reward for true humble contemplation comes in God meeting her through the angel.
ANGEL
The angel too is far more humbly dressed than in Cortona. He is dressed in flesh-colour representing the incarnational nature of his message. His drapery is decorated simply with a gold band across his heart, in the peacock feather design of the in his wings. The peacock design represents eternity. The angel reciprocates Mary’s humble gesture. Rather than raising his hand to announce God’s message, as in traditional Annunciation iconography, he crosses his hands in devotion to the sacredness of what is happening in Mary, and in the devotion to Mary that we also are to share. This harmony between Mary and the Angel’s actions may suggest that heavenly will and human will are in harmony. Perhaps this was asking the friars and us to consider whether our human wills are in harmony with divine’s will.
If Mary carried the body of Christ within herself, we have the same responsibility to carry Christ in Spirit within us. The Dominican preacher had a responsibility to carry Christ to the world to which he preached, and to represent the truth faithfully, with doctrinal integrity and truth.
MARY DETAIL & LIPPI
This Mary is not a dramatic majestic figure. She is a humble example of simple holiness. Antoninus’ sermon on the Annunciation talked about her “simple beauty”. She is not the idealised beauty represented by Neo-platonist artists like Botticelli or Filippo Lippi. There is a realism about many of Fra Angelico’s paintings of saints, which encourage us to believe that we too could become like them.
MARY IN ALCOVE
Here Mary is also an example of humble prayer in the style of Dominic himself, who you wanted to emulate as a monk. Like Humbert of Romans’ teaching that to be a great preacher it was necessary to be a great contemplative, Mary has been in contemplation and through this devotion God recognised her usefulness to him and blessed her.
We can see in the expression and gestures of Mary in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation paintings, how reflective friars might use such images to work through a similar process of thought. The 14th C Dominican preacher Fra Roberto (dates) suggested a way of contemplation that explored Mary’s attitude at the Annunciation. He wrote of her spiritual and mental process as a development through:
(FRA ROBERTO) over the HEAD OF MARY
Fra Roberto suggested that these could be used as a thought-progress like Lectio Divina in which we can ourselves contemplate scripture:
(LOGGIA ARCHITECTURE AND BRUNELLESCHI FOUNDLING HOSPITAL)
The realistic space in which the Virgin meditates emphasises that the Annunciation is real and present here. In the Cortona altarpiece the loggia was positioned slightly obliquely so that one side receded, pointing towards the garden and the expulsion of Adam and Eve. Its architecture is similar to the arcade of Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital, which is appropriate, as Christ is here finding a holy home on the earth.
SANTISSIMA ANNUCIATA CLOISTERS
Its Corintian columns are similar to Alberti’s architecture of the cloister of Santissima Annunciata which was attached to the Foundling Hospital.
(ANNUNCIATION LOGGIA)
The San Marco Annunciation uses a more central vanishing point so the space surrounds the figures more evenly than the other Annuciations and the garden is seen through the columns. This helps to focus on Mary and suggests the enclosed, interior nature of our encounter with God, the protection of Mary for the Christ-child & Christ’s protection of us.
Barred WINDOW
The barred window of Mary’s cell frames the vanishing point. It symbolises Mary’s chastity open like her heart to God’s will. Garden Pallisade and whole picture. The simple wooden palisade fence which surrounds the garden may be intended as a reference to Mary and the friars’ simple enclosed contemplative life as well as the garden of the Soong of Songs. The architecture is more detailed than in the Cortona Altarpiece. The Corinthian Capitals resemble those in Fra Angelico’s Vatican fresco of the Ordination of St. Stephen, but also the cloisters of Florence’s Santissima Annunciata. Their combination with Ionic columns is strange architecturally. Possibly the three frontal Corinthian Columns symbolise the majesty of the Trinity framing the encounter between the heavenly and human world. They are probably also intended to relate the scene to the reality of contemporary Florence, where the friar similarly wants to encounter and be of submissive humble use to God.
SAN MARCO LIBRARY & CLOISTERS)
The columns have the harmonic proportions of Michelozzo’s new architectural arcades of San Marco’s cloisters and Library. Perhaps Michelozzo helped Fra Angelico in getting the detail of the architecture right. As well as being architect of Sam Marco, Michelozzo was brother of the Prior of Santissima Annunciata and was originally commissioned for that convent but their patrons, the Mantuan Gonzaga’s were patrons of Alberti.
ANNUNCIATION
Fra Angelico understood perspective from the teachings of Alberti, architect of Santissima Anunciata (1404 -72.) As a humanist theoretician Alberti was a member if Pope Eugenius’ court in Florence. His treatise on painting was written in 1435. Fra Angelico first put these theories into practice almost straight away in his San Marco Altarpiece of 1438-40.
If Fra Angelico was using conventional Renaissance symbolism the columns could represent the wisdom of Christ or the Trinity supporting the church. But the artist is more likely to be using them to symbolise Mary. Several contemporary litanies and sermons described Mary as the Tabernacle and Temple of God, the Ark of the Covenant, where the Trinity resided. This is also suggested in the simple three-legged stool, which shows her as the humble throne of God, prefiguring her more glorious enthronement in heaven. So the Loggia is most likely to represent Mary as the dwelling place for God’s Son, the Mother of God.
In the Cortona altarpiece, the figures of Adam and Eve in Eden are bathed in a supernatural light. Here the light is more natural. The face of the angel is in shadow, whereas the full light of God falls on the face and womb of Mary. Unlike the COrtona Annunciation, there’s no need of gold rays or a gold oriole around the dove of the Holy Spirit. God is becoming human to bring human beings salvation in this very simple encounter.
Christ in coming is identifying with poor as the Dominican vow of poverty gave them solidarity with the poor. The Dominican’s message was meant to reassure the poor that, like themselves, theirs were the Kingdom of Heaven and that their salvation was assured. That is the message here: God is become human for us.
ANNUNCIATION QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION
SESSION 3 CONTEMPLATING THE CROSS
It’s not surprising that the Passion is the most represented theme in the San Marco frescoes. Christ’s Cross is central to our belief that God has given us Salvation. But as with the Annunciation’s emphasis on the truth of Christ’s Incarnation, the Cross held further, particular significance for the Dominicans beyond the doctrine of Salvation. Among the Cathars’ heresies, which St Dominic had worked to counter, was their lack of belief in either Christ’s physical death or Resurrection. They did not venerate the Cross, unlike Dominic who placed much emphasis on the Christian practice of revering the Cross as a foundation for our understanding of our position with God. Dominican paintings or sculptures of the crucifix
emphasise the mission of the Founder of the Order. The Cross was also significant in promoting Thomas Aquinas’ theology and spiritual practice. A popular Dominican legend described Aquinas praying before a Crucifix; it spoke to him and he was physically lifted into the air. Franciscans and Carthusians told similar stories of Francis and Bernard. Raymond of Capua’s biography of Catherine of Siena, similarly described her ecstasies and visionary experiences of Christ on the Cross after Mass, and her receipt of the stigmata. Catherine described the wounds of Christ shaking her heart. So many Dominicans expected meditation on Christ’s Cross to move them to religious ecstasy.
(CRUCIFIXION FRESCO CHAPTER HOUSE)
On the north wall of the Chapter House Fra Angelico’s great mural of the Crucifixion completed by Gozzoli was a constant reminder of the importance of the Cross to the Observant Order.
(SANTA MARIA NOVELLA CHAPTER HOUSE)
Fra Angelico’s design is a much simplified and more focused image of the Cross than the Chapter House frescoes of Santa Maria Novella, the Dominican’s Florence headquarters, which represented the crucifixion dramatically but was dominated by scenes of the triumph of the Dominicans as a preaching order; a propaganda image stressing their universal importance.
(CRUCIFIXION FRESCO SAN MARCO CHAPTER HOUSE)
By contrast the Observants’ fresco at San Marco focuses on the Cross as central to faith and central to all monastic Orders. It encourages one to be willing to suffer alongside Christ to promote his truth and the message of Salvation.
The Chapter House was the centre of monastic life, used for daily meetings, sacred readings, sermons, legal and financial transactions. Here novices were received into the Order,friars made their confession to the Prior, absolutions, penance, penalties and punishments were given in the sight of the religious Community. The mural emphasises that all this was witnessed & assessed by Christ on the Cross and the saints ranged around him.
(SANTA MARIA NOVELLA CRUCIFIXION)
Painting such a crucifixion in the San Marco Chapter House formed a continuity with the Chapter House fresco of their mother-house, Santa Maria Novella.
(SAN MARCO CRUCIFIXION)
But Fra Angelico followed Antoninus’ prescription to omit extraneous detain. We see no crowd of angels or unnecessary onlookers and focus on figures from Church History, like us dependent on the Cross. At the foot of the Cross are not just the normal biblical figures you would expect in a crucifixion scene, but 20 Christian worthies, perhaps derived from Antoninus’ Summa Historialis, a Compendium of Church History:
Prophets foretelling Christ’s coming and the events of the Passion.
In the frame are historical prophets Daniel 9:26; Isaiah 53:4
who pointed to the crucifixion:
Sybils representing the wisdom of the past, Theologians, saints associated with Florence and the Medici: John the Baptist, Mark, Lawrence, Cosmas and Damian - Cosimo de Medici’s patron Saints. Fathers of the Church, founders of different major Religious Orders, led by a kneeling Dominic: Augustine , Jerome, Francis, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ambrose, Benedict.
At the bottom is a genealogy of the Dominican Order:
17 great leaders, teachers and mystics, saints, scholars and popes on branches held by Dominic.
All present in some ways suffered for their faith and witnessed to the importance of the Cross for Salvation..
Originally the sky was blue. It is in its present state because Fra Angelico used a red medium, haematite as a binder for the azure pigment, and the pigment has flaked away. This red underpainting was never meant to be seen, but later restorers, believing it was the painter’s original conception, mistakenly enhanced it. It does give added drama, as though, as we do, we live and act under the blood of Christ.
THE MAN OF SORROWS – also known as ‘Imago Pietatis’.
The Dominicans, like the Franciscans, recognised the power of images of the Passion to reach people’s hearts as well as to teach the theology of Salvation. Devotion to the crucifix was intended as a reminder of Christ’s presence in the daily Mass. Through centuries of debate about the nature of the Eucharist, Dominican theologians promoted belief in transubstantiation. In 1264 Thomas Aquinas was commissioned to compose the liturgy for the recently established Feast of Corpus Domini, or Corpus Christi.
This fresco in the niche of Cosimo de Medici’s private cell recalls this. It was the background against which the sacrament was displayed for Cosimo’s private veneration. In Man of Sorrows images like this, Christ’s burial cloths are sometimes painted deliberately to resemble humeral veils used for raising the host or anti-pendium altar-cloths. The imagery specifically related the sacrificed body of Christ to his spiritual presence within the elements of the Mass. Although the Man of Sorrows iconigraphy had its origins in Byzantine art, it became especially associated in late mediaeval, Renaissance and Counter-Reformation art with the dogma of transubstantiation. A vision of this figure of the wounded Christ had supposedly been seen when Pope Gregory raised the Host, confirming to doubters that Christ was truly present within the sacrament. This was re-emphasised by another legend, the Miracle of Bolsena in 1263, when the priest apparently witnessed the elevated host bleed on the corporal during the Mass. I find that side of the tradition uncomfortable, but you can see why such images were used to encourage devotional recollection.
(CRUCIFIX CLOISTER)
A major painting of Dominic kneeling in humble adoration of the Crucifix c 1442 confronts one as one enters San Marco’s cloister. (A similar image is in the upper corridor near the dormitories). It originally appeared simpler: the marble border was added in 1628, when the surrounding frescoes were also added. As with the Annunciation upstairs this fresco marked the limit in the cloister beyond which secular visitors could not enter. Beyond was more sacred space. As with the Annunciation, friars, following Dominic’s example, would bow to this image whenever they passed.
(CRUCIFIX SIMPLIFIED)
Standing or kneeling before the Cross is another liminal space, a threshold, a place to recollect Christ’s sacrifice, the place where heaven and earth met in Christ’s body to bring about the mystery of our Salvation. The image, perhaps even more than the large fresco in the Chapter House, reminded friars of their reliance on the Cross, their embrace of the Cross in their own lives, their acceptance of poverty, suffering, humility and dependency, their willingness to follow the example of Christ, and the central importance of Salvation to their life, prayer and preaching. The Dominican vow of ‘charity’ included the vow to follow the way of God by being willing to go through to the supreme sacrifice for one’s neighbour as Peter Martyr had done. One of Dominic’s dictums was “Naked to follow the naked Christ”.
Catherine of Siena had emphasised the importance of ‘fervour’ particularly in devotion to the Cross and following the sacrificial way exemplified by Christ. In Raymond of Capua’s biography of Catherine of Siena, written in 1374, she was described as, in a vision, choosing a crown of thorns from Christ rather than a crown of gold, in order to be more like her master. Following Dominic and other Dominican saints, friars were intended to always reverence the crucifix or images of the Passion in prayer as they passed. In doing so they were taught to contemplate the magnitude of Christ’s suffering and reflect on its implications so they could more truthfully preach the Christian mysteries.
The cloister fresco fills the arch surrounding it. Christ is silhouetted against an azurite blue sky, not the dark sky of the Calvary story, but perhaps the sky of God’s eternity, which Salvation has opened to us.
Christ’s body is slightly foreshortened, as if seen from below. His eyes appear to be still alive, looking at the devotee. Rivulets of blood flow down the Cross and across the ground towards the viewer, bringing salvation towards us as in the Mass.
(BRUNELLESCHI CRUCIFIX)
Fra Angelico knew perspective from Alberti and Brunelleschi. His crucifixions are so similar to these that he may have studied the anatomy from Brunelleschi’s Crucifix or Masaccio’s Trinity, both of which he would have known in Santa Maria Novella.
(FRESCOES OF CRUCIFIXION TOGETHER)
Frescoes of St Dominic before the crucifix were also designed for the 7 novices’ cells in the South Corridor, one of the last convent buildings to be completed.
Many of these have been attributed to Angelico’s assistant Benozzo Gozzoli working from Fra Angelico’s drawings.
These frescoes seem to have been painted fast. From the joints in the fresco, we can see how much wet plaster was applied to paint into each day. Some appear to have been completed in just two days.
Novices lived in single cells like the friars, but were taught and prayed separately from the friars, instructed by a novice-master who oversaw their personal and spiritual lives and instructed them in the Order’s Rule, customs and liturgies. Humbert of Romans’ ‘Instructions for Novices’ provided very detailed rules, a curriculum for formation and themes for meditation and prayer.
Novices were taught to reverence the Cross, like all Dominicans following the example of their founder, Dominic, who humbled himself in prayer every time he passed a crucifix. The different kneeling poses before the Cross were adapted from Dominic’s teaching on prayer.
(NINE MODES MANUSCRIPT)
The different poses and gestures reflect the postures in Dominic’s De Modo Orandi Corporalieter Sancti Dominici– The Modes (or Ways) of Prayer a manual probably compiled about 1274, 50 years after Dominic’s death in 1221 (born 1170) by a friar who claimed to have watched his master praying. It was probably written in northern Italy, probably Bologna, the centre of the Order. The text was designed specifically for instructing novices, though it was used by the rest of the Order. This manuscript c. 1330 in the Vatican Biblioteca Apostolica: MS. Rossianus 3 illustrated 8 of the nine of these ways. In emulating Dominic’s posture before the Cross novices and friars were encouraged to meditate humbly on the enormity of their Saviour’s suffering, to be able to devote themselves o study, contemplation and mission as Dominic had.
Both Humbert of Romans and Antoninus wrote commentaries on Dominic’s 9 Modes. Humbert believed that disciplining our bodily pose could influence our spiritual sensitivity and understanding. He called genuflection, bowing, and prostrating oneself before the Cross “the bodily language of faith”. Humbert suggested the postures friars should adopt in most aspects of their everyday life. Novices should walk with their heads slightly bowed with humility, eyes down, necks bent forward. Such physical discipline seems strange many us today who value freedom and individuality. But it relates to mediaeval belief that outward discipline of body can affect our inner consciousness. Humbert believed, that we could read the state of another’s soul through their gestures and posture, and that our souls could be elevated to higher states through learning proper ways of holding the body. Our physical and psychological natures, the body and soul, were believed to be inter-related. Our bodily posture was thought to affect our spiritual well-being and our awareness of the spiritual world. Hugh of St Victor had written an earlier treatise on this union between the body and the soul. By imitating Dominic’s bodily motions in prayer, friars and novices hoped to experience similar rapture or spiritual agony to their founder. Consciously disciplining our outward selves was thought to help form our inner awareness.
(CRUCIFIXES TOGETHER)
Dominic’s relationship with Christ and his understanding of prayer is particularly expressed in these depiction of the saint in prayer before the crucifix. Aquinas regarded contemplation as a major goal of religious life. As I’ve said, he believed he learned more through contemplation than academic study. Contemplation for him and most Dominicans was not to go into a mystical or imaginative state but to apply mental discipline, thinking about scripture and theological truths and praying their application into your life. This, Aquinas believed, was the best way to developing spiritual maturity and wisdom.
In the novices’ cells, 7 of Dominic’s 9 modes of prayer are represented. The 2nd 4th and 9th modes are omitted, possibly because they relate to ordained friars more than novices. Cell 16, like the picture in the Cloister is a holistic representation of Dominic’s prayer-life and dependency on the Cross. The Novices’ frescoes share several similar features: the Cross is almost identical in each, all show Dominic kneeling before the Cross and all are framed similarly. All are painted on a simple toned background, which makes you focus on the position and meaning of the figures. The Cross is rooted in bare ground, simply painted, and the figure of Dominic is always kneeling. Possibly for compositional unity Fra Angelico altered the posture of a couple of Dominic’s modes: there was little space to show Dominic standing upright or prostrating himself. But I wonder if this is for more than compositional unity: perhaps Fra Angelico, under Antoninus’ guidance, was trying to help the novices internalise their prayers to consider not just the outward pose but the emotion on which the inner soul was to concentrate.
Unlike the large Chapter House mural these aren’t biblical Crucifixion scenes. They represent the crucifix as a catalyst for religious devotion. Franciscans or later the Carmelites or Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises contemplated by using the imagination to penetrate into biblical scenes. Most Dominicans taught that meditation was more a studying of and reflection on what scripture is saying.
Dominic was described as meditating for hours on what the Cross meant to him. The Novices were intended to emulate Dominic to strengthen their formation in prayer, contemplation, devotion and physical actions.
Dominic’s “Nine Positions of Prayer” expressed a friar’s relationship with God and were thought to lead to spiritual states:
(1st WAY: CELL 15)
PRAYING FOR GOD’S MERCY (2nd Way), Dominic prostrated himself in confession. Lying face down before the altar or Cross expressed humility, and dependency helping us value what Christ has done for us. This mode isn’t represented in the novices’ cells as with the 4th & 9th modes.
(3rd WAY FLAGELLATION))
PENITENCE, HUMILITY, MERCY & SELF DISCIPLLINE (3rd Way) Dominic’s practice of self-flagellation encouraged the disciplining of the body as a sign of penance, standing or kneeling bare-backed before the Cross recollecting one’s sins or the sins of others. Franciscans and Dominicans practiced flagellation or self-flagellation, not for sadomasochistic reasons one hopes, but to discipline the body and mind. Remember that before becoming a Dominican novice.
Fra Angelico had been part of a penitent Carmelite confraternity that encouraged flagellation and in Florence there was a Dominican confraternity of lay-flagellants, the ‘disciplinati’or ‘battuti’. Early in the Dominican Order’s history flagellation became restricted to use in Chapter. Though Dominic apparently practised self-flagellation, the Observants discouraged self-flagellation or flagellation in private. In De Modo Orandi the practice was restricted to a communal ceremony administered before the community in the Chapter Room where there was a mural of Dominic holding a scourge.
It’s not a practice many would recommend today, though some still use it, but bodily self-discipline in other ways might help focus us, whether in fasting, refraining from certain actions or activities, denying ourselves for a time. There might be ways of interpreting self-discipline that individually help focus our spiritual and physical lives. The idea of disciplining our physical actions can demonstrate that God is Lord over our lives.
(Christ’s Mocking and Flagellation)
Paintings of Christ’s Flagellation recollected that Christ suffered similarly in winning our Salvation.
(FRIAR’S CELL)
5. (CELL 21) Stretching in the form of a Cross, reflecting Christ’s pose (6th Way) [Cell 21], was one way in which Dominic implored divine power for great spiritual actions or before attempting great things like healing,
It was said that Dominic prayed in this way in anticipation of the miracles God would perform. He prayed in this position because he believed it was a way of coming to understand if only in part what Christ was praying on the Cross.
CELL 37 Cell 37 shows Dominic’s proper 6th position of prayer, standing before the scene of the Cross as in the Chapter House fresco. This cell may have been the lay-brothers’ Chapter room, a larger cell than most, opposite Cosimo’s, at the head of the night-stairs. Mary and John at the foot of the Cross are paired with Dominic, just as in the Chapter House fresco historic Church leaders are paired with biblical figures. It has been suggested that the images are portraits: Antoninus as St. Dominic and Fra Giuliano Lapaccini as Thomas Aquinas
8 (CELL 19) REFLECTIVE READING Sitting in the reading pose in recollection (8th Way) [Cell 7 & 19] Recollection through reading, emphasised the importance of study and scholarship in helping us to focus on truth. The Dominicans meant a slightly different practice when they talked about Meditation from that practised by the Franciscans. Franciscans, rather like later Ignatian meditation, used their imagination in prayer to feel themselves in the presence of the biblical story. The Dominicans emphasised meditating directly from scripture, asking for revelation about what the text was saying.
(CELL 7)
Thomas Aquinas sits beneath one of the crosses, with his book open as he regards the Cross in his mind and in Summa Theologia. In the fresco of the Mocking of Christ,(Cell 7) Dominic sits at the foot of Christ, meditatively reading and immersing himself contemplatively in the sufferings of both Christ and his Mother, who turns away from the scene, drawing the viewer in to consider the spiritual implications of the Cross in their own mind and how its meaning impacts on our whole lives. According to the Benedictine Rule the purpose of reading and study was not to learn as many facts as possible or gain knowledge. It was to allow yourself to be enlightened by God’s wisdom. The Dominicans saw study as prayerful, an important occupation to build faith.
(CELL 19)
An early biography of Dominic described him as: “working sweetly with his mind” over texts of scripture which often led him to weep with emotion. In cell 19 he holds the book in his hand, but is not seated at his desk, as in most Modes of Prayer illustrations.Instead he kneels, covering his eyes as he weeps in response.
(BOOK 9TH WAY)
(Cell 16) Cell 16 represents the whole of Dominic’s prayer life. It is summed up, like the crucifix in the Cloister, by Dominic embracing the Cross and all it means.
(MODO DE ORANDI)
It may seem strange today for an entire treatise to be written just expounding the founding father’s physical positions in prayer.But this demonstrates some the wholeness with which the Order regarded the human body, action and prayer.
Everything in some way is connected.
(SET OF ANGELICO’S CRICIFIXES)
What pose we choose for prayer is. I’m sure, not a problem for God. He hears and responds no matter how we pray;it is our sincerity that matters. But for Renaissance thinkers our sincerity was shown in our decorum, just as two generations ago you would be expected to wear best clothes to church, as a sign of respect for God. We recognise today how people’s body language communicates different things. Practices like Tai Chi or Yoga and prayer and relaxation practices of Eastern religions have shown that body pose and gesture can express and influence our psychological thoughts. Our bodily position can influence our concentration, and perhaps the direction our contemplation takes. Our pose may also speak to others among whom we pray, as Dominic’s pose seems to have spoken to and encouraged prayer in his contemporaries who watched him at prayer.
(DOMINIC HOLDING THE CROSS)
Augustinians and Dominicans believed that contemplating an image could bring the intellect, will and memory to spiritual life. An image did not just teach or help you recall intellectually; like emotive preaching it could work on the senses and convey to you something of the spiritual presence and reality of the truths it contained or illustrated.. So in Antoninus’ teaching the image had a slightly sacramental function. That was especially true in focusing on the Crucifix with its associations to Salvation and the Eucharist.
The Cross has a plethora of meanings for each of us. We probably change daily in our appreciation of what Christ’s death achieved and what it means in your life and mine. Perhaps as Aquinas might suggest we ought to finish this session not with an image but with words of scripture to contemplate… (1 Corinthians 1:18).. “The Cross is the power of God to those who are being saved”.
CRUCIFIX QUESTIONS FR CONTEMPATION:
2nd Way: PRAYING PROSRATE reliant on God for mercy
3rd Way: BODILY SELF DISCIPLINE out of penitence, humility and gratitude
4th Way: GENUFLECTION: Kneel humbly before the Cross confident in God’s mercy to you
5th Way: RECOLLECTIVE MEDITATION: Hands held out reverently or clasped as in
liturgy, listening to receive from God
6th Way: Stretched WIDE to understand Christ’s praying for the world from the Cross
7th Way: ECSTASY: Whole body stretched upwards to heaven receptive to God
8th Way: REFLECTIVE READING
9th Way: HOLY CONVERSATION: Prayer when walking, talking and preaching
SESSION 4 LOOKING FOR RESURRECTION
(COMBINATION RESURRECTION PAINTINGS)
Fra Angelico’s Resurrection scenes are among his most intriguing, partly because of the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection, but they are also among his most innovative, thought-provoking designs. Can they help us reach into the meaning of this mystery to us?
RESURRECTION : MARYS AT THE TOMB
Before we look at the paintings in detail let’s think why a Friar might contemplate the Resurrection and future life:
a/ To be assured of his belief and Creed: We say I believe in the Resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting quite lightly. But how can a preacher bring the Resurrection hope to others if not assured himself of the promise of life in Christ?
Mary searching the tomb to find Christ is like many of us: “What is all this about? Where is he?” Dominic worked hard to dispel the Cathar heresy that there was no Resurrection.
LAST JUDGEMENT
b/ Friars reflected on judgement keep himself pure: Thinking of the future benefits of heaven might help many resist temptations which might debar them from enjoying it. For the mediaeval/renaissance mind there was a real fear of hell. This encouraged strict religious discipline. Many resist this today as against the freedom which Christ has brought us into. I prefer today’s concentration on freedom but perhaps we’ve lost much of the sense of dependency on God’s grace for salvation and life, which was such an incentive towards purity for the Observant friars. Fear of what follows death also gave them an incentive for preaching and prayer, to bring their world to Christ.
HEAVEN
They reflected on the future life to help them live now as though already enjoying some of the benefits of salvation. In the theology of Fra Angelico’s time there was less emphasis than today on confidence in our assurance of salvation. Death was ever-present, war, plague and other diseases, illness, deaths in childbirth made life-expectancy more fragile than today. People were afraid of not being prepared for heaven, and not as assured of God’s love as we try to make them today. So their imagery of heaven, despite the limits of our knowledge of what life after death will be, was a huge incentive to work towards.
CHRIST IN LIMBO [HARROWING OF HELL]
This was in Cell 31 for the Lay Brothers.Icons of the Resurrection often show Christ breaking down the doors of Hell, releasing Adam and Eve and leading a variety of captive souls to a purified life. That’s depicted here: evils are squashed, demons are quivering, hiding and fleeing, the roof of the place of the dead is breaking up as Christ announces Good News and release to the Spirits in prison as in 1 Peter 3:19-20. But here the figures are more personal than in many judgement pictures. Rather than generalised they have individual personalities, the sort of detail you’d expect from a miniature illuminator. Art historians differ over whether this painting is by Fra Angelico himself or an assistant, perhaps Zanobi Strozzi, but it seems designed to show that God is interested in the individualities and personalities of those who are being saved. Our Salvation isn’t general, God is interested in you and I personally as well as the individuality of those to whom the friars and we minister. The portrait-like figures suggest that Christ is releasing individuals who have undergone hardships.
It reads slightly like the newsreels of groups being released from concentration camps. Adam’s face is careworn. They are all in the similar condition: the patriarch, a woman dressed penitentially in camel-hair, perhaps Eve, a younger praying man, from his dress it could be John the Baptist or Elijah, and an elder in robes, perhaps Moses the secular prophet or Aaron representing the priesthood. Perhaps they represent different types of people encountered daily by those in the convent. There is hopefulness and confidence on their faces as they move forward to the call of the Risen Christ from whom rays golden of light radiate. They all recognise their dependency on Christ and his winning for them and us the promise of Resurrection.
In contemplation we are meant to remember that we, like them are in that group and we are dependent on Christ and look to him. The light of Christ’s Resurrection shines on us. Adam’s nakedness like ours will be transformed to white robes of cleansing as Christ releases us. This is the literal fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy in Lk.1:78-9. In a way sense the Dominicans are followers of the commission of John the Baptist through Zachariah:
“The forgiveness of their sins, has come through the tender mercy of our GOD, by which the rising sun/son will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death and guide our feet into the path of peace.”
Just as John the Baptist was to be “a prophet of the Most High… to give his people knowledge of Salvation”the Dominican preacher was to bring people knowledge of Salvation by pointing them to Christ. That was to be the work of the Christians living in the convent. This was for a lay-brother’s cell, who needed assurance of his rescue by Christ as much as each friar. You can imagine the painter contemplating as he painted that this was his calling too and for his fellows in ministry: “to give people knowledge of Salvation. Lift people from darkness & the shadow of death and guide their feet into the path of peace.!”
It’s the calling of all of us who are followers of Christ's way.
We don’t get much impression of the darkness of limbo cave in which they have been living: apart from the demons, none of the horrors of hell from which threat they have been eternally rescued. What is important in the picture is its focus. the home to which they are going, much more stable than the crumbling rocks .
They almost seem to be entering a church: the Kingdom of God which we as a church should be building. Would that our Christian institutions were more like the Kingdom of God, rescuing people like this, allowing Christ to breaking down the barriers that keep people from him! This is our aim. Christ here is a model for the Dominican preacher and for us. We are called to go into the world and offer people hope and release.
NOLI ME TANGERE
Here’s the perfect example, to the Renaissance mind, of a saint who discovered release through Christ and his Resurrection. This painting in Cell 1 was probably painted Gozzoli. Both this and the Descent into Limbo are close in composition to the same subjects as represented in the Chapter House of the Dominican mother-church, Santa Maria Novella. Mary here is an individual released to new hope through recognising the Resurrected Christ and beginning to understand what Resurrection should mean for us. This cell was that of the friar who oversaw the duties and formation of the lay-brothers. Perhaps it suggests that he was to lead them as Christ led Mary to understanding and new life.
Aquinas called Magdalene ‘the Apostle to the Apostles’,the first to pass on or preach the message of the Resurrection to the disciples. He made her one of the Dominican patron saints. The Master of the Lay Brothers was to lead new disciples to discover the truth. He would direct those who tilled and hoed the convent land and gardens, which may be why Jesus is so clearly represented with garden implements. The palisade of the garden looks like a known space, perhaps the temporary wall was that of the new convent or one the friars might recognise. The master of the Lay-brothers is to create a garden where people meet the risen Christ, literally and metaphorically.
Mary Magdalene was frequently depicted in Dominican art. She was thought to symbolise Dominican life: She was a penitent. Antoninus advised women to take the contrite Magdalene as their role-model.
The biblical Mary of Magdala was released from possession. But often, as you’ll know, the mediaeval and Renaissance Church conflated her with a penitent prostitute, the woman taken in adultery, Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, and the hermit Mary of Egypt clothed in camel-skin (as in Donatello’s sculpture of Mary in the Duomo Museum, Florence).
INTRODUCTION
This study more relevant than just exploring how Art reflects reflect the history of Theology and the Church. There is a revival today in Christians using art for contemplation. Many talk of both secular and religious art giving them spiritual experiences, but often aesthetic responses are confused with the spiritual. True spirituality brings us and our thoughts before God in Spirit and in Truth. If we confuse aesthetic feelings with the sacred we’re in danger of a form of idolatry. But art can help us contemplate faith, so how do we reflect on Christian belief through images?
Early Dominican theologians had thought through many of these issues and wrote treatises on ways of using art for Christian contemplation. They influenced Fra Angelico’s creation of some of the most truly Christian contemplative works of Renaissance art. His apparently simple images were deliberately designed to encourage profound Christian devotion and quiet meditation. Much Christian art since has been influenced by him in some way, though pastiches of his work are often far weaker than his own pieces.
His paintings are not as simple as they seem but rooted in the developments of Renaissance art theory. He was a contemporary of revolutionaries in Renaissance art like Masaccio (1401-1428), Alberti (1404 -72), Brunelleschi (1377-1446) Ghiberti (1378/1455), and Donatello (1386-1466).
Renaissance writers promoted Fa Angelico’s spirituality: The title Fra Angelico ‘angelic brother’ was applied to him shortly after his death by fellow Dominican Fra Girolamo Borselli, (d.1497) in recognition of his sanctity. This term ‘beatus’/‘blessed’ was derived from Thomas Aquinas term for a state of grace enjoyed by the angels. Aquinas use it to describe “the ultimate perfection of rational or of intellectual nature” The prior of San Marco from 1444 Fra Giuliano Lapaccini described Fra Angelico as “the greatest master of the art of painting in Italy… a man of absolute modesty devoted to the religious life.”
Vasari, who had interviewed elderly people who still remembered Angelico, wrote: “Fra Giovanni was a man of the utmost simplicity of intention, and was most holy in every aspect of his life… renowned for the holiness of his habits… gentle, temperate, living chastely… humble, modest in all his works and conversation, fluent and devout in his paintings… He laboured continually at his paintings (and) used frequently to say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares or anxious thoughts in order to exercise his art by being occupied by thoughts of Christ … He altered nothing, (once finished) but left all as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of God... It is also affirmed that he would never take a pencil (brush) in his hand without first offering a prayer. He is said never to have painted a Crucifix without tears streaming down his cheeks... in the countenances and attitudes of his figures it is easy to recognise proof of his sincerity, his goodness, nobility and devotion of mind towards the Christian religion.”
(POPE-HENNESSY QUOTE)
Vasari is known for hyperbole, but the more critical 20th Century scholar John Pope-Hennessy wrote: “What cannot be denied is that the golden thread of faith runs through his work. There is no painter whose images are more exactly calculated to encourage meditation and to foster those moral values which lie at the centre of the spiritual life.” [1974 p.5]. After years of lobbying Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope Paul II on 3rd October 1982.
THE ARTIST’S LIFE
(SIGNORELLI PORTRAIT)
Fra Angelico’s real name was ‘Guido di Piero di Gino’. He was born around 1400 about 20 miles north-east of Florence and travelled to Florence to train as a painter about 1410/12 perhaps in the studios of Ambrogio di Baldese, the miniaturist Sanguigni. and Lorenzo Monaco. By 1417 he was already an established artist before he took holy orders.
(DEPOSITION / SANTA MARIA DEL CARMINE)
His spiritual commitment is seen early in his career. In 1417 he joined a Carmelite confraternity the Compagnia di San Niccolò Bari at Santa Maria del Carmine. Such confraternities were groups of lay and ordained, with similar spiritual aims, often in similar employment, meeting for support and encouragement in religious devotion. Sometimes they specialised in fostering particular spiritual practises: San Marco, where Fra Angelico later painted as a Dominican friar, supported several such confraternities.
Fra Angelico’s confraternity of 20 men, mostly Carmelite friars, was based on strict discipline, self-flagellation for penitence, and acts of charity. The Dominican reforming prior Giovani Dominici who promoted art as a spiritual exercise & means of contemplation was an earlier member from 1408, as were an Augustinian and an Observant Franciscan. Probably the spiritual emphasis of this confraternity, and contact with Dominican reformers, influenced Fra Angelico’s calling to take holy orders.
(FIESOLE)
Some time between 1419 and 1423 he became a novice in the reformed Dominican ‘Observant’ convent of San Domenico at Fiesole taking the name “Giovanni”. In his time Fra Angelico was known as ‘Brother Giovanni di San Domenico di Fiesole’ or ‘Giovanni da Fiesole’, but to save confusion I will refer to him throughout as ‘Fra Angelico’. He was probably ordained as a priest after about 5-6 years as a novice. By1436, he was ‘Vicario’ /vicar of Fiesole, responsible for managing the convent’s affairs.
(SAN MARCO)
In the same year 1436 his Order took over San Marco in Florence. In 1443 he was appointed ‘sindicho’ ‘bursar’, with control of San Marco’s finances. In 1450 he succeeded his brother as Prior of San Domenico at Fiesole for 2 years. There is also a tradition that he was offered the role of Archbishop of Florence, but turned it down, proposing Antoninus, Vicar of San Marco and former Prior of Fiesole. So we are not just looking today at the work of an artist, but a trusted man of God.
Monks running artists’ workshops were not uncommon: Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517). Two of the della Robbia family of ceramic sculptors, Marco and Francesco became friars at San Marco after Fra Angelico’s time, and Dominican Observant nuns in the 16th Century ran a terracotta sculpture workshop in Florence. Several Dominican nuns were painters.
Presumably as a Dominican Observant Fra Angelico would have been a preacher and teacher as well as an artist and priest. He painted prolifically, and produced many designs for assistants to complete. We don’t know how many assistants he had, but know several names. The most significant was Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-97) to whom he entrusted many important frescoes in San Marco and who became a court painter to the Medici.
At first Fra Angelico worked primarily for Dominican commissions, but he travelled widely for other major commissions, Brescia in 1432, Cortona (1438).
(PORTRAIT SIGNORELLI & ROME
He worked alongside Signorelli at Orvieto in 1446-7 and he travelled to Rome to work for 2 successive popes Eugenius IV then Nicholas V in c.1445-9 and c.1453-5. He died there on 18th Feb. 1455 at the monastery of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.
(Tomb)
Such was his reputation that he was not buried in the cloister with most of the monks, but in the church, facing the altar of Thomas Aquinas. (His tomb has since been moved). A life-size tomb effigy was commissioned from Isaia da Pisa who also carved the papal tomb for Eugenius IV. And the Master General of the Order composed his epitaph.
DOMINICAN CHARACTERISTICS
(SAN MARCO SQUARE)
To truly understand Fra Angelico’s work we need to appreciate its Dominican context. The Dominicans aren’t an isolated Order. Their study &contemplation were primarily devoted to preaching and teaching. The piazza in front of their convent of San Marco was a perfect venue for preaching. A bell supplied by their patrons, the Medici summoned people to open-air sermons.
(GROUP OF CELLS IN SAN MARCO)
Fra Angelico’s contemplative art had a double function: it encouraged the friars to contemplate spiritual truths so that they could then go out to preach and teach the truths of the Gospel to the community. The simple cells of the convent with their plastered walls, were designed as an ideal environment for study of scripture and visual contemplation without distractions. Humbert of Romans a 13th C master wrote: “To be a great preacher on must first be a great contemplative”. Fra Angelico’s murals were designed to promote this.
(SINGLE CELL IN SAN MARCO)
Each Dominican, following the example of Catherine of Siena, was required to have a private cell. The convent of San Marco has 44 cells, each with a fresco designed by Fra Angelico to encourage meditation. Novices’ cells had a crucifixion image, then they’d move to one with an image of a key Gospel subject, with which the friar would live for most of his monastic life. I wonder if part of their discipline was to never got bored with the one image but let it constantly challenge your thinking!
The earliest Dominicans avoided using art. In its first constitutions of 1220 and 1228 Dominic legislated against the use of grand art and architecture by the Order: “Let our brothers have moderate and humble houses, so that they should never burden themselves with expenses, nor that others, secular or religious, should be scandalised by our sumptuous buildings”.
In 1290 they relaxed policies about art and buildings, recognising that visual representations of faith could help their mission, and influence the environment in which they lived. Convents in cities like Florence used sacred art to influence the surrounding people and culture. Fra Angelico’s prior Antoninus of Florence particularly promoted this: San Marco became a cultural centre, though more simple than the main unreformed Dominican convent Santa Maria Novella.
From the late 13th Century the Dominicans played an important role in the development of sacred art. They didn’t just use paintings and sculptures in their churches and piazzas but also held up painted cloths to illustrate their sermons.
They were known for vivid language in their sermons &engaged the viewer’s emotions, through emotionally charged images. Fra Angelico’s images however are usually more subtle and quiet.
(SAN DOMENICO DI FIESOLE)
Fra Angelico joined the convent at Fiesole about 1419. As part of the reformed Dominican Order, the ‘Observants’, they strictly observed St. Dominic’s (1170-1221) original Order. The Observants were a relatively new group founded in 1390 by Raymond of Capua, the confessor of Catherine of Siena who was Master General of the Dominicans from 1380. Raymond’s assistant, Giovanni Dominici, was called to Florence in 1400 and he resolved to reform the priory of Santa Maria Novella, the powerful Florentine headquarters of the Dominicans which was almost a university of Neo-platonic thought.
Dominici concluded that a new Observant convent was needed to follow Dominic’s original intentions for the Order. So in 1405 the Dominican Bishop of Fiesole, about 4 miles north-east of Florence, gave the Order a vineyard beneath the town, in the solitude of the hills, where they built the Convent that Fra Angelico joined about 14 years later. At first just 13 brothers from Santa Maria Novella joined Giovanni Dominici at Fiesole and would walked daily into the city to preach. Dominici’s disciple, Antoninus, was Prior at Fiesole when Fra Angelico joined the Order.
(SAN MARCO)
Cosimo de’ Medici, who dominated Florence politically and financially, promoted several monastic reform groups, probably for political reasons, to keep the most respected preachers on his side, as well as for religious expediency, to relieve his soul of guilt. In 1436 Cosimo persuaded Pope Eugenius IV to evict the Silvestrines from the convent of San Giorgio sulla Costa in Florence on partly false claims of wealth, impiety, unchastity, and the squalor and disrepair of their church buildings. The Observant friars of Fiesole were given the church and monastery to rebuild as a new convent - San Marco, with financial support from the Medici. It became an important centre for reform, in the centre of the city. Through Antoninus and Fra Angelico and it also became important for the development of a Dominican form of devotional art.
Fra Angelico remained as a friar at Fiesole when a group moved to San Marco. He moved to work there sometime between 1439 & 1441. His paintings financed the Order, just as Fra Angelico’s brother Benedetto painted illuminated choir-books which were, for decades, a major source of income for the Fiesole friars.
{MADONNA OF THE SHADOWS}
In 1445 St Marco officially separated from Fiesole after a decade of shared governance. As with many reforming groups, it wasn’t long before tensions rose between the Observants at San Marco and those at San Domenico in Fiesole. The Fiesole brothers continued to embrace poverty while Antoninus believed that San Marco needed a cultural profile to influence the city. Fiesole saw the Florentine convent’s wealth as a betrayal of Dominic’s strict Order. Fra Angelico remained with the stricter Observants at Fiesole. This painting in a corridor fresco near the prior’s cell contains political reminders of the need for simplicity:
Dominic with Book in Madonna of the Shadows)
Fra Angelico painted a quote from the founder on a book held by Dominic: “Have charity, preserve humility, possess voluntary poverty. I call forth God’s curse and mine on the introduction of possessions into the Order.” In 1445 Fra Angelico re-joined his brother who became Prior of Fiesole. The wide recognition of his painting skills didn’t keep Fra Angelico in Fiesole for long. He was called to Rome by Eugenius IV late in 1445 or early 1446, and was still working there from the next pope Nicholas V when he died.
(SERIES OF PAINTINGS, SAN MARCO, FLORENCE)
Fra Angelico’s paintings in San Marco are among the great pilgrimage sights of Florence; even secular tourists often talk of them as emotionally and spiritually moving. You’d have to harden yourself not to see beauty in them and a reflection of the infinite behind their style and content.
FRA ANGELICO’S STYLE (RESURRECTION)
I want now to look at how Fra Angelico’s style communicates spiritual meaning. It might help us make & choose useful art today.
Sincerity – you feel that as a friar he believes what he is painting.
Simplicity – Although Fra Angelico’s figures are beautiful & elegant, they have a simple naturalism that suggests that their spiritual subject is real and not idealised. Though some are full of symbols or allusions, these aren’t overt, unlike the complex Neo-platonic or classical references in much Renaissance art.
Clarity – Here’s none of stylistic swagger or intellectual complexity of later Renaissance or Baroque art; Fra Angelico draws his figures with clear outlines, significant gestures, few irrelevant extra characters. He presents the scene clearly
and recognisably so what we are to contemplate is clear.
Colour – Colours are bright but un-showy, harmonious, peaceful, to stimulate us to look at them then contemplate.
Unostentatious style – These aren’t overwhelming huge artworks; they’re designed to speak to people’s souls and minds, not overpower the viewer. Fra Angelico is not being intellectually clever for its own sake, as in some Renaissance art. His style has a certain ‘manniera’/ ‘stylishness’, but conveys spiritual truth by beauty of form, gesture and colour not by showing how clever he is.
Humility – There’s a humility about his work: Fra Angelico didn’t aim to be a ‘superstar artist’ like Michelangelo, Raphael or Caravaggio. Much of his work was collaborative, designed for Christian contemplation, not the artist’s ego. Fra Angelico decorated some of the humblest cells himself, while many more prestigious cells or important subjects he gave to assistants.
The most elaborately decorated cell, reserved for private use by Cosimo de’ Medici, was surprisingly not decorated by the Master but by an assistant, probably the young Benozzo Gozzoli.
What mattered was the image’s meaning and what you found in contemplating it, not who painted it. This would have been against a patron like Cosimo’s normal way of thinking.
Beauty – The elegant figures reflect the Renaissance idea that the form of a person reflects their inner spiritual self, but unlike Filippo Lippi’s idealised Neo-Platonic Madonnas, Fra Angelico’s figures have a naturalism about them which helps us see them as real people with humanity. He may have derived ideas of beauty from the writings of Alberti, who distinguished between ‘beauty’ and ‘ornament’. Ornament was surface decorativeness, beauty was concerned with harmony of proportion and form.
‘DECORUM’ - The Renaissance aesthetic theory of ‘decorum’ says that style should be appropriate to subject-matter.
MICHELOZZO
Michelozzo the architect of the new convent of San Marco refined classical detailing and proportion to design buildings that reflected and promoted faith in the architecture’s simplicity, unity and harmony, to promote spiritual reflection.
Fra Angelico’s style of painting is similarly ‘appropriate’; its form matches its spiritual content and purpose.
Quiet – There is little over-dramatic emotion in Fra Angelico’s figures- Few are melodramatic - the dying thief and weeping Saint in the Crucifixion in San Marco Chapter House. This quietude encourages deeper reflection than over-emotionalism.
DEPOSITION
Even the Deposition, one of his most emotive works promotes reflection, not emotional anguish.
COMPOSITION - Fra Angelico was a master of composition, not with the drama or panache of later High Renaissance artists, but quiet harmony to draw you into quiet contemplation.
CONTEMPLATIVE - Possibly because the works developed from the painter’s own contemplative practice, Fra Angelico’s scenes can lead us fairly quickly into meditating on their spiritual meaning. They rarely contain extraneous distractions. His art was designed to quieten the thoughts, not over-stimulate them;
to aid depth of contemplation not to over-excite the mind with surface ideas. As contemplatives we’re not looking to excite our surface thoughts but reach into our souls and ask God to speak to our inner being. In other words, we are encouraged to look beyond the surface of the image, the story or the style, to find what God’s Spirit would teach us through the picture. This art is not meant to be admired as a ‘masterpiece’; it is intended as a window through which we reach towards deeper spiritual understanding.
DOMINICAN INFLUENCE ON FRA ANGELICO
CRUCIFIXION CHAPTER HOUSE DETAIL
The spirituality in Fra Angelico’s paintings was influenced by several Dominican scholars and teachers, notably:
Dominic’s teachings
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)
Catherine of Siena
Humbert of Romans (d.1277) 5th Master of the Order from 1254
Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1435) the Calmaldolise scholar who talked of art as “painted preaching” and introduced translations of many of the Greek Fathers to Renaissance thinking.
Reformist Dominican Preachers:
Giovanni Dominici (-1405)
Antoninus of Florence (1389-1459)
Manfredi da Vercelli (1414-23) Leonardo Dati (1414-25)
Thomas Aquinas 1225-74
Aquinas valued human creativity and art, recognising that images could encourage prayer. But art was a secondary activity and source: Art could point people towards spiritual subjects, but could not represent the immaterial: “what God is always remains hidden from us”. Meditation, he claimed, taught him more than books or scholarship. Contemplation for him was not about exploring mystical, abstract sensations. He encouraged mental discipline and meditative study which he said developed maturity, wisdom and understanding for teaching and preaching. The aim of contemplation isn’t to just build our own spiritual experience but to help others grow, passing on what we’ve learned. Thomas Aquinas’ motto was frequently printed on Dominican art: “Contemplata allis Tradere”/“to hand on to others what has been contemplated”. This was an aim of the San Marco frescoes.
No single source has been found for the subjects of Fra Angelico’s series of frescoes in San Marco but the subjects may relate to the 3rd Part of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1267-73) devoted to explaining the life of Christ.
DOMINIC READING
Aquinas wrote of developing the “penetrative gaze” in contemplation. When we contemplate we involve our imagination in the subject and let its spiritual meaning direct our prayer. He emphasised true ways of approaching images for use in prayer. Art is not reality; it can only contain fragments of truth about the unknowable. It should be beautiful, to encourage higher thoughts. The ugly should only be depicted if representing something intended to be morally repellent and thus repelled people from sin.
(DOMINIC ADORING THE CROSS CLOISTERS)
Images were not to be worshipped; they should be explored with deep thought, rather than adoration. Only God can be worshiped. Aquinas was careful to make distinctions between idolatrous worship (idolatria) and true worship (latria). He developed the terminology for different degrees of spiritual reverence using art from translations of John of Damascus and the statutes of the 2nd Council of Nicea. The Cross, he believed, had a power as a divine weapon against idolatry so encouraged ‘latria’ (worship of the God who provided salvation). Representations of Jesus in his human form demanded ‘hyperdulia’, the highest form of adulation. Images of the Virgin Mary too were to be venerated with ‘hyper-dulia’, in reverence for her role as mother of God. Image of the saints were to be acknowledged with less strong veneration:‘dulia’.
He wrote:“…there is a two-fold movement of the mind towards an image: one regards the image itself, as a particular object; another regards the image as the representation of something. And between these movements there is this difference: In the former one is moved (to appreciate the image) whereas the latter movement (appreciates the truth which the image represents). Therefore we must insist that no reverence is shown to Christ’s image as an object – for instance carved or painted wood… Reverence should be shown to its subject …as to Christ himself. Since Christ is adored with the adoration of latria (worship), it follows that his image should be approached with the adoration of latria (the worship of its subject, Christ”. (Summa Theologica 3,Q.35. Art.3)
The image draws worship to its prototype. The worshipper does not passively view a work of art, there is a movement of spirit within them to the image and through the image to the subject of worship.
HUMBERT OF ROMANS (d.1277) (CELL 37 ADORING THE CROSS)
The preacher and teacher Hubert of Romans, 5th Master of the Order from 1254, recommended directness of communication and unadorned language. Preachers, he said, should understand the symbols of faith in order to be able to teach them.
By symbolism he meant mostly biblical symbolism, but metaphysical visual symbols were also explained to help people understand faith. Symbolism was used practically not mystically. This may be why Fra Angelico paints subjects direct, not symbolic subjects. Humbert wrote in “Things that a Preacher Needs”: “Then there is knowledge of the church’s mysteries…The church is full of mystical symbols, and it contributes greatly to people’s education to have these expounded to them, and so it is helpful if the preacher understands them… The spirit of understanding…enables a man to understand what is hidden under the symbol, because to ‘understand’ means to ‘take your stand under’ the symbolic surface.”
(Humbert of Romans Things that a Preacher Needs IX:110, S. Tugwell: Early Dominicans: Selected Writings p217). In other words, if we’ve thought deeply through the subjects of faith, we can live by them and expound them with conviction.
KNEELING BEFORE CROSS
Contemplation, for Humbert and other early Dominican writers should concentrate, not on developing ourselves and our interior life but more on recognising our dependence on God. When early Dominicans used the term ‘contemplation’ they meant a process rather different from its use by the Carmelites. Contemplation reinforced scriptural and theological truths.
Art was used in prayer to re-enforce this. Hubert Order wrote of the necessity of contemplative prayer: “To be a great preacher one must be a great contemplative”. To be a great communicator of Christian truths one needs to reflect on their meaning and the most effective ways of conveying them.
Giovanni Dominici (ILLUMINATION)
Dominici, the founder of the Fiesole convent probably never met Fra Angelico, he lived in Rome when the artist joined the Order, but his writings & reputation would have influenced Fra Angelico.
Dominici regarded art as a Christian educational tool for the reform movement. In his 1403 Regola del Governo di Cura Familiare, Dominici advised parents to introduce children to Christian truth through pictures. He wanted to encourage visual literacy, especially where there was little verbal literacy. He believed that sacred images could be important for promoting and enhancing faith. Visual art was another way to augment teaching, preaching and written scholarship. Art was not ‘indulgence in vanities’, as Bernard of Clairvaux believed.
Giovanni Domenici also believed that creating sacred art was a useful spiritual discipline. He illuminated manuscripts himself as a devotional contemplative practice, using drawing as a spiritual exercise. This may have influenced Fra Angelico to use designing & painting as a spiritual exercise since both Angelico & his brother had trained in painting and illumination prior to joining the Order.
Dominici wanted to reform the subject matter of sacred art and scholarship; he rejected the Renaissance tendency to use pagan subjects as allegories for Christian meanings. He encouraged a return to portraying Christian subjects directly, which may be why what Fra Angelico’s art lacks ostentatious intellectual cleverness or classical allegory, instead painting directly the life of Christ and the saints.
ANTONINUS of FLORENCE
More directly influential on Fra Angelico’s spirituality and art would have been Dominici’s disciple Antonio Pierozzi (1389-1459) commonly called Antoninus the Latin name under which he wrote. (He was canonised in 1523 as Sant’ Antonio). Antoninus was prior at Fiesole during Fra Angelico’s formative time as a novice (1422-6) and founded San Marco, being prior there from 1439. He was also Vicar General of the Dominican Observant Friars in Tuscany (1433-46), an eminent thinker, writer and popular preacher, admired and sponsored by Cosimo de Medici. He became Archbishop of Florence between 1446 and 1459. It was probably he who guided Fra Angelico and Fra Cipriano the first prior of San Marco in the convent’s decorations and choice of Christological themes for the frescoes.
These frescoes on the cell walls seem to have been an innovation. At Fiesole the only frescoes & decoration had been in public rooms. Perhaps Fra Angelico’s gifts had some influence on the decision.
CELL SAN MARCO
Like Dominici, Antoninus believed that sacred art could inspire spirituality, encourage piety and devotion and convey teaching and doctrine. His treatise Summa Theologica, (completed in 1458 after Fra Angelico’s death) contains many passages on sacred art.
The Bible was of prime importance for contemplation but he valued art’s contribution in interpreting faith, teaching and encouraging prayer. The duty of artists, he wrote, was “to morally enlighten themselves and others”. Art could promote Christian truth, support teaching and help contemplation.
While he condemned grandly decorated convents and recognised that the constitution of the Observant Order demanded poverty, Antoninus believed that the construction of a convent in the heart of Florence required fine, harmonious architecture and art, so that the Order could speak into the culture of the city.
Observants were previously suspicious of art, seeing it as an extravagance. But Antoninus’ defence of art encouraged the growth of their use of images and refined architecture. As the Observant Orders expanded, their commissioning of altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts increased.
MADONNA OF THE SHADOWS
Like Domenici, Antoninus believed art needed reforming:
It was a betrayal of the gift of God, he believed for artists to create “precocious images, for their forms not for their beauty”. Religious art, he wrote should “avoid things that are curious and ill adapted to excite devotion, but tend on the contrary to promote laughter and vanity.” In other words religious art, as in that of Fra Angelico, should be simple, serious and devout, not ‘clever’ or ‘entertaining’. It should help people focus on God not become obsessed with artistry itself. Art should convey its message directly, not be over-full of superfluous extra detail or over-decoration.
Artists were required not to embellish their paintings with inappropriate figures or non-biblical scenes: “Nor are they to be praised who paint apocryphal tales, such as midwives in the nativity or the Virgin’s girdle thrown down by Thomas the Apostle during her assumption because of his doubt, and the like. To paint curiosities in stories of the saints or in churches, which have no value in stimulating devotion, but laughter and vanity, such as monkeys, or dogs chasing hares, or vain adornments of clothing, appears superfluous or vain.” (St. Antoninus c1458 Summa Theologica Pt. 3, Title 8, Ch.4, section 11)
ANNUNCIATION
Antoninus wanted Christian subjects to be conveyed realistically, not with unconvincing symbolism: The Trinity, he wrote, should not be represented with three heads, paintings of the Annunciation shouldn’t include the embryo Christ-child flying through the air or in Mary’s womb. This may account for the direct naturalism in Fra Angelico’s pictures; they are real people, not full of excessive background detail or extra figures which might distract from the message of the work.
Like Aquinas, Antoninus emphasised that art was only a means to worshipping God in spirit and in truth: “Images are not valuable in and for themselves, but because they move the worshipper beyond the representation to the object of worship.” “Holy images partake of the sacred by stimulating contemplation of higher things.”… “The priest himself is elevated to greater devotion as he looks upon an image.”…
GROUP OF CELLS
Antoninus probably helped Fra Angelico select fresco subjects for San Marco, and maybe how to represent them: Some frescoes denote the meaning of the room:
Over the door to the library Thomas Aquinas was depicted as the Dominican scholar’s supreme example, Doctor of the Church. Over the hostel for pilgrims was a painting of Christ as Pilgrim, welcomed by two friars. In the Cloisters St. Dominic Embracing the Cross and the Annunciation upstairs indicated by examples of piety, the limits in the convent where visitors could no further enter.
The Order’s constitution required the friars’ cells to contain images of the crucified Lord, Mary and St. Dominic as a focus for prayer and to be models to the friars. The Gospel subjects in the cells follow Antoninus teaching in ‘Summa Theologica’ that monastic discipleship should closely follow and resemble Christ’s life, teaching and example. He described Christ and Mary as “examples for our way”. Frescoes of Jesus’ life were intended to help both the friars’ devotion to Christ and commitment to living like him.
SINGLE CELL SAN MARCO
The cells of the reformed Observants were austere and undecorated apart from the mural, with plain plaster walls. Michelozzo made the San Marco cells of San Marco less cramped than the cells in many other monasteries, to encourage meditation and study. The pictures in each cell were not intended for decoration but as aids to meditation. The fresco and the window are on the wall opposite the door. It has bees suggested that they were both constantly visible spiritual exercises: the window looked onto the physical world to which the friar must minister and for which he prayed, the mural was a window into the spiritual world.
Both were part of the monk’s meditations: how should he relate spiritual truth to his physical world in his prayer and his ministry? How could he most meaning-fully preach the truths of Christ to the world he saw beyond the convent walls?
In our break perhaps consider how this relates to you?
What helps bring the stories and theology in scripture alive for you? Are there ways in which you could bring them more alive for others?
What helps you focus in prayer?
What might help you focus more intently on God in prayer?
Are images helpful or a distraction to you personally?
What sort of images most communicate to you?
Are you developing your spiritual understanding mostly for yourself or to be able to share faith in Christ more effectively with others?
SESSION 2 CONTEMPLATING THE ANNUNCIATION
(ANNUNCIATION)
Perhaps Fra Angelico’s most famous work is the Annunciation in the dormitory corridor of San Marco. Like the Madonna of the Shadows surrounded by saints, (in the north wing, outside the Prior’s cell), it was painted entirely by Fra Angelico. He created it after returning from Rome in 1450, so is in a more mature style than most of the frescoes in the cells. The colours and tones are heightened because the artist over-painted the fresco with tempera to strengthen the image.
What did it mean for the monks?
(PLAN)
The position of this painting is significant, at the head of the stairs to the dormitories with their different wings of separate cells for lay brothers, novices, friars and a special cell reserved for their secular patron Cosimo de Medici. Every member of the community would pass this mural over 30 times each day – on the way to and from church services, meals, work, preaching, study or ablutions. Like the large painting of Dominic embracing the Cross in the Cloister, this fresco marked a significant area in the convent. It was at the place where lay-brothers and visitors to the convent library in the North Wing were not allowed to enter further. So the painting gave a sense of specialness to its position.
(STAIRS) One even feels this today as you climb the stairs and see it ahead.
(CORRIDOR)
In modern theological terms this was a liminal space, a threshold between two different experiences. Friars passed it moving to their rooms, where the mural in their cells could take their meditations further into the meaning of Christ’s life, Passion and Resurrection and the Joys and Sorrows of Mary. This was a place of prayer between the wings of the dormitory. Its subject is also liminal spiritually, The Annunciation was a threshold, where earth and heaven met: Mary met the Angel, Mary, an example to each member of the Community, heard the message of God, and in human substance the divine Christ took form.
(INSCRIPTIONS)
The friars would gather here to pray and kneel to recite the Little Office of Mary in front of the fresco before descending to services. Its 2 inscriptions encouraged prayer: In majuscule lettering: “When entering and standing in front of the pure virgin do not forget to say “Ave”. In gothic lettering on the base of the loggia: “Hail, O Mother of Mercy and noble resting place of the Holy Trinity.”
(ANNUNCIATION)
Like the Franciscans the Dominicans claimed Mary as the patron of their Order. This iconography of the Annunciation is just one of several images of Mary which they developed.
(LEONARDO ANNUNCIATION)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation for Santa Maria della Grazie, Florence, another Dominican church used similar iconography.
Although images of the Virgin and the Annunciation were common in mediaeval and Orthodox art, the theological emphasis of the subject, affirming the humanity of Christ through his Incarnation was particularly significant to the Dominicans. Remember Dominic’s original mission was to convert the Cathars, whose heresies included denial that Christ was God in human form. The incarnation was not just at the centre of faith, it was central to the aim of Dominican preaching.
(ANNUNCIATION)
Peter of Verona the first Dominican Martyr had preached against Catharism in Florence in 1244, encouraging Florentines to hang holy images in their homes &at street corners and to sing ‘Laude’ before them to reflect on the truth of Christ’s Incarnation.
Peter Martyr’s teaching may have promoted the humanity with which the Virgin and Child were represented in Dominican art. Many images of the Madonna and Child commissioned for monastic cells were intended to encourage contemplation of the meaning behind God becoming human.
(DUCCIO MADONNA)
Duccio’s huge 1285 ‘Rucella Madonna’ in the Uffizi Gallery was a major Dominican commission to promote belief in the Incarnation. It hung above the ‘tramezzo’ screen in their mother church Santa Maria Novella, separating the laity from the friars to declare the true humanity of Christ to the world.
ANNUNCIATION
Antoninus the Prior of San Marco was spiritual advisor to a confraternity that emphasised Christ’s Incarnation: the ‘Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin Mary and Saint Zenobius’. In 1444, 6 years before this painting, the confraternity had moved from the Servite Church of Santissima Annunciata to a new chapel in San Marco built by Cosimo de Medici at the north-east edge of the 2nd cloister. The confraternity commissioned new artworks and manuscripts for the convent from Fra Angelico and Gozzoli and Biagia Sanguini the manuscript illuminator who trained and sponsored Fra Angelico in his earlier Carmelite confraternity
(SANTISSIMA ANNUNCIATA - ANNUNCIATION)
The subject of the Annunciation was special to Florence. Florence Cathedral was dedicated to Mary and one of the city’s most spectacular festivals was the Feast of the Annunciation. The Church of Santissima Annunciata in Florence, not far from San Marco (where the confraternity had originally been based), was famous for its 13th C painting of the Annunciation, which was thought to work miracles and heal people from infertility. It was also significant for artists, because it was supposed to heal blindness and had the reputation of having been painted by an angel. The original was badly damaged by fire in 1304.
REPLICA
Replicas of this image were commissioned for most Florentine churches, including a fresco on the entrance wall of San Marco.
(ANNUNCIATION ICON)
Like any Annunciation icon, its imagery primary emphasised the Christ’s Incarnation and Mary’s place in the theology of Salvation. As with icons, some Dominicans taught that the most sacred images weren’t created just from the imagination and design of artists. Some were thought to have spiritual power and communicate because they copied spiritually inspired prototypes. An early mediaeval tradition taught that an apostle, considered by some to be Luke, had painted Gabriel announcing Christ’s birth to Mary long before the writing of the gospels. The Dominican Fra Giordano da Rivolto (c1260-1311) preached in 1305 in Santa Maria Novella: “to begin with, all paintings came from the disciples: in order to provide the maximum amount of information the figures of the first saints were painted from life showing their appearance, their circumstances and the way they were. Thus we find that Nicodemus painted Christ on the Cross in a beautiful picture showing Christ’s appearance and bearing so that whoever saw the picture fully saw almost all the circumstances, so well have they been portrayed, because Nicodemus was present at Christ’s crucifixion…. Likewise we also find that St. Luke painted a portrait of Our Lady, showing her precisely as she was… The disciples made these paintings in order to give people the most accurate record of the events, so that these paintings, and especially the old ones which came from Greece are of great authority, because in them the many disciples who painted recount the said things. And they provided copies for the world, which possess great authority as great as that of books”
Another prevalent mediaeval traditions was that the Magi took a painter with them on their journey to record their finding of the Messiah. All this is of course rubbish, but it shows the significance given to images of faith. Some Dominican teachers like Jacobus de Lorraine who compiled the Golden Legend, a book of inspiring stories of the saints, relished such tales because they appealed to & convinced the masses. Other Dominican Reformers in the Observant Order in which Fra Angelico developed would probably have questioned such superstitions and legends. They emphasised the reality of belief, as appealed to by Fra Angelico’s realism.
(FRA ANGELICO ANNUNCIATION)
Fra Angelico interpreted the Annunciation in a new way. He repeated this composition in several versions, which may imply that he found the composition particularly inspired contemplation. He created a sense of space and simplified the composition. The space and clarity helps us contemplate Mary’s thoughts, her humility and her example to us as a real person and devout servant of God.
The Dominicans venerated Mary. Christ was to be worshipped. Aquinas’ taught that the Virgin Mary, exalted as the Mother of God, deserved to be venerated with the strongest adulation, ‘hyperdulia’. So, as the inscription required, you wouldn’t just pass the picture without taking notice. You would acknowledge Mary and reverence her as you passed for her role as mother and bearer of Christ who came through her to bring Salvation to the world and to you. The Liturgy of the Feast of the Annunciation (25th March) praised Mary as the “Source of our Redemption”. You had a personal relationship out of gratitude for her son’s gift of your Salvation. But she is simple, like you. Fra Angelico doesn’t enthrone her but sits her on a simple three-legged wooden stool, perhaps symbolising the Trinity. The third leg, Christ is as yet hidden.
(CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN, SAN DOMENICO)
As committed Catholics the friars would also believe and trust in Mary’s prayers for them & their work at Christ’s side in heaven, as emphasised in Fra Angelico’s paintings of the Coronation of the Virgin in Cell 9 and the altarpiece of one of the two chapels dedicated to Mary at St. Domenico, Fiesole (1427-9) now in the Louvre.
(CORTONA ANNUNCIATION)
Fra Angelico had already created several similar images of the Annunciation in his altarpieces for Fiesole 1425, Cortona c1432 and San Giovanni Valdarno. The main differences are: The angle of the Mary’s loggia, the figure in the roundel : God the father in Fiesole (Prado) and Valdarno, Isaiah foretelling the birth of the Messiah in Cortona, and the size of Adam and Eve in the background: Valdarno smallest Cortona slightly larger.
PRADO
The Fiesole figures were largest .
CORTONA ALTARPIECE
The most splendid was commissioned by a wealthy cloth-merchant and property-holder Giovanni di Cola di Cecco, for his tomb and sacristy chapel. Hence the splendour of the drapery of the Angel to express the cloth-merchant’s devotion.
Adam and Eve’s inclusion literally interprets Thomas Aquinas’ teaching about Mary, who he praised “as so full of grace that her flesh conceived the Son of God… She is the antithesis of Eve whose disobedience led to the Fall.”
ANGEL AND MARY DETAIL Antoninus wrote “the tongue of God spoke through the good word of the angel, so that in the virgin’s womb the word was made flesh… “I am saying to you ‘Ave’ (‘Hail!’) the complete opposite of whom is ‘Eve’ (‘Eva’ – whose name is the letters of ‘Ave’ reversed).
(SAN MARCO ANNUNCIATION)
In the San Marco fresco the angel’s wings are coloured with the multicolours of Aquinas’ descriptions of the creatures of Paradise.
Mary is shown in an enclosed fruitful garden, symbolic of her virginity. This is the enclosed a garden of the Song of Songs 4:12: “A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed”.
PRADO GARDEN
The emphasis is that trough Mary Christ brought about a return to the Edenic relationship with God from which Eve and Adam were expelled for sin. The three altarpiece gardens are full of symbolic plants, the discarded fruit of sin at their feet, showing their disregarding, as if trampling underfoot the Trinity, the lemon tree represents bitterness but promises healing, the white flowers are purity that will be restored under Mary’s Son.
SAN MARCO
The San Marco fresco has less botanic detail than the garden plants of the Cortona altarpiece, perhaps to not distract from contemplating the significance of the figures. The enclosed garden of Mary’s virginity was the subject of many mediaeval hymns, sermons, writings and commentaries. The Dominican theologian Albertus Magus (1206-80) in his encyclopaedia praising the Virgin wrote of the virginal garden as “sown with a mystical breath and its grasses shaded by cedars palms and cypresses.” This seems to be literally referred to in the trees in Fra Angelico’s background. Mary has protected and dedicated herself so the enclosed garden of her life could only be opened and entered by God the Lover. The picture encourages the friar & any Christian contemplative to similarly protect their life in holiness so they can be met by Christ & be useful to God.
(CORTONA ALTARPIECE DETAIL)
In the Cortona Altarpiece the Prophet Isaiah looks on from the roundel at the intersection of the arches. Isaiah 7:14 is the text on his scroll and on the book on Mary’s lap, which she has been contemplating: “the Lord himself will give you a sign: Look, the virgin (young girl) will conceive and bear a son and will call his name Immanuel, God with us.” PRADO ROUNDEL
In the other two altarpieces the figure of the Father watches all.
(ARCHITECTURE DETAIL)
The direction of the pink entablature of the arcade points directly to Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise in the distance. The influence of sin on human life would expel us from God’s presence, Mary’s obedience & her Son have restored us. The picture is reminding us that God is here in this place. But he is mysterious, not depicted as a figure, but a roundel, which may relate to Dominici and Antoninus teaching about not representing the divine too literally.
(DOVE)
In all the altarpieces and the San Marco Annunciation the dove of the Holy Spirit descends in rays of gold light or golden oriole. The swallow above in the Prado version (often a Franciscan symbol) may signify Jesus migrating from one dimension to another. The dove is more subtly suggested in San Marco, painted in translucent pigment above Mary’s head and now barely visible.
WORDS OF MARY CORTONA
The words of Mary interestingly emit from her lips in reverse as they are spoken back to the Angel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; Let it be to me according to your word.” I cannot find any precedent for this reversed lettering in other Italian art, though it is occasionally found in alchemical manuscripts.
(SAN MARCO ANNUNCIATION)
Fra Angelico seems to have learned from his former painting of the Annunciation for the San Marco Frescoes. He focused attention more internally on the meaning of the Annunciation. The friars would be meant to know the story and its theological implications. So he omitted the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the background and much extraneous detail.
DETAIL MARY’S DRESS AND WOMB
Mary’s dress was painted in similar diaphanous pigment to that used for the dove, perhaps to suggest the mystery contained within her womb: the Word become flesh. The line of Mary’s womb is slightly swollen, suggesting the presence of Christ within.
MARY IN ANNUNCIATION
Beyond the theology of Salvation & Incarnation in the Annunciation, Mary is also represented as our model as a faithful Christian. The picture grows out of the Dominican devotion to Mary, as an example for the believer. In his Summa Theologica Antoninus wrote of Mary as “an example for our Way.”“looking intently at Mary.. the priest is moved to consider how she formed the Word made flesh... and to contemplate his role in bringing for the, ever humbly, the Body and Blood of Christ from the substance of bread and wine… and carried the word of God in his preaching.” So before this painting we are meant to recognise that in this liminal space we consider our own mission and ministry.
The humility and willingness to serve in this scene is a model for our own vows of service, humility, chastity and poverty. Unlike the Cortona Altarpiece and the Annunciation fresco in Cell 3, Mary is not reading. She looks up from devout contemplation. As she is greeted by the Angel, her hands are crossed humbly above her womb. A reward for true humble contemplation comes in God meeting her through the angel.
ANGEL
The angel too is far more humbly dressed than in Cortona. He is dressed in flesh-colour representing the incarnational nature of his message. His drapery is decorated simply with a gold band across his heart, in the peacock feather design of the in his wings. The peacock design represents eternity. The angel reciprocates Mary’s humble gesture. Rather than raising his hand to announce God’s message, as in traditional Annunciation iconography, he crosses his hands in devotion to the sacredness of what is happening in Mary, and in the devotion to Mary that we also are to share. This harmony between Mary and the Angel’s actions may suggest that heavenly will and human will are in harmony. Perhaps this was asking the friars and us to consider whether our human wills are in harmony with divine’s will.
If Mary carried the body of Christ within herself, we have the same responsibility to carry Christ in Spirit within us. The Dominican preacher had a responsibility to carry Christ to the world to which he preached, and to represent the truth faithfully, with doctrinal integrity and truth.
MARY DETAIL & LIPPI
This Mary is not a dramatic majestic figure. She is a humble example of simple holiness. Antoninus’ sermon on the Annunciation talked about her “simple beauty”. She is not the idealised beauty represented by Neo-platonist artists like Botticelli or Filippo Lippi. There is a realism about many of Fra Angelico’s paintings of saints, which encourage us to believe that we too could become like them.
MARY IN ALCOVE
Here Mary is also an example of humble prayer in the style of Dominic himself, who you wanted to emulate as a monk. Like Humbert of Romans’ teaching that to be a great preacher it was necessary to be a great contemplative, Mary has been in contemplation and through this devotion God recognised her usefulness to him and blessed her.
We can see in the expression and gestures of Mary in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation paintings, how reflective friars might use such images to work through a similar process of thought. The 14th C Dominican preacher Fra Roberto (dates) suggested a way of contemplation that explored Mary’s attitude at the Annunciation. He wrote of her spiritual and mental process as a development through:
(FRA ROBERTO) over the HEAD OF MARY
- Disquiet / ‘conturbatio’was the first reaction of Mary’s encounter with the angel who told her “Don’t be afraid
- Reflection / ‘cogitatio’ Mary’s response was not doubt but a sincere question: “What does the Lord require of me?”
- Inquiry / ‘interrogatio’ “How can this be, since I am still a virgin?”.
- Submission / ‘humiliatio’ “Let it be so… Be it done to me as the Lord wills.”
- Merit / ‘meritatio’ – This is more than God’s reward for spiritual integrity or the eternal merit won by Mary, it is
Fra Roberto suggested that these could be used as a thought-progress like Lectio Divina in which we can ourselves contemplate scripture:
- Disquiet / ‘conturbatio’ – looking for scripture to challenge us.
- Reflection / ‘cogitatio’ – the equivalent of ‘meditatio’ in Lectio Divina, studying and thinking of it meaning.
- Inquiry / ‘interrogatio’ – challenging our minds about the questions brought up in our reflection.
- ‘humiliatio’/ submitting to God’s revealed will
- Merit / ‘meritatio’ God’s acceptance and use of us through our humble acceptance of his will.
(LOGGIA ARCHITECTURE AND BRUNELLESCHI FOUNDLING HOSPITAL)
The realistic space in which the Virgin meditates emphasises that the Annunciation is real and present here. In the Cortona altarpiece the loggia was positioned slightly obliquely so that one side receded, pointing towards the garden and the expulsion of Adam and Eve. Its architecture is similar to the arcade of Brunelleschi’s Foundling Hospital, which is appropriate, as Christ is here finding a holy home on the earth.
SANTISSIMA ANNUCIATA CLOISTERS
Its Corintian columns are similar to Alberti’s architecture of the cloister of Santissima Annunciata which was attached to the Foundling Hospital.
(ANNUNCIATION LOGGIA)
The San Marco Annunciation uses a more central vanishing point so the space surrounds the figures more evenly than the other Annuciations and the garden is seen through the columns. This helps to focus on Mary and suggests the enclosed, interior nature of our encounter with God, the protection of Mary for the Christ-child & Christ’s protection of us.
Barred WINDOW
The barred window of Mary’s cell frames the vanishing point. It symbolises Mary’s chastity open like her heart to God’s will. Garden Pallisade and whole picture. The simple wooden palisade fence which surrounds the garden may be intended as a reference to Mary and the friars’ simple enclosed contemplative life as well as the garden of the Soong of Songs. The architecture is more detailed than in the Cortona Altarpiece. The Corinthian Capitals resemble those in Fra Angelico’s Vatican fresco of the Ordination of St. Stephen, but also the cloisters of Florence’s Santissima Annunciata. Their combination with Ionic columns is strange architecturally. Possibly the three frontal Corinthian Columns symbolise the majesty of the Trinity framing the encounter between the heavenly and human world. They are probably also intended to relate the scene to the reality of contemporary Florence, where the friar similarly wants to encounter and be of submissive humble use to God.
SAN MARCO LIBRARY & CLOISTERS)
The columns have the harmonic proportions of Michelozzo’s new architectural arcades of San Marco’s cloisters and Library. Perhaps Michelozzo helped Fra Angelico in getting the detail of the architecture right. As well as being architect of Sam Marco, Michelozzo was brother of the Prior of Santissima Annunciata and was originally commissioned for that convent but their patrons, the Mantuan Gonzaga’s were patrons of Alberti.
ANNUNCIATION
Fra Angelico understood perspective from the teachings of Alberti, architect of Santissima Anunciata (1404 -72.) As a humanist theoretician Alberti was a member if Pope Eugenius’ court in Florence. His treatise on painting was written in 1435. Fra Angelico first put these theories into practice almost straight away in his San Marco Altarpiece of 1438-40.
If Fra Angelico was using conventional Renaissance symbolism the columns could represent the wisdom of Christ or the Trinity supporting the church. But the artist is more likely to be using them to symbolise Mary. Several contemporary litanies and sermons described Mary as the Tabernacle and Temple of God, the Ark of the Covenant, where the Trinity resided. This is also suggested in the simple three-legged stool, which shows her as the humble throne of God, prefiguring her more glorious enthronement in heaven. So the Loggia is most likely to represent Mary as the dwelling place for God’s Son, the Mother of God.
In the Cortona altarpiece, the figures of Adam and Eve in Eden are bathed in a supernatural light. Here the light is more natural. The face of the angel is in shadow, whereas the full light of God falls on the face and womb of Mary. Unlike the COrtona Annunciation, there’s no need of gold rays or a gold oriole around the dove of the Holy Spirit. God is becoming human to bring human beings salvation in this very simple encounter.
Christ in coming is identifying with poor as the Dominican vow of poverty gave them solidarity with the poor. The Dominican’s message was meant to reassure the poor that, like themselves, theirs were the Kingdom of Heaven and that their salvation was assured. That is the message here: God is become human for us.
ANNUNCIATION QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION
- In quiet try to let the simplicity of this Annunciation speak to you about your spiritual relationship with God. What does it say to you about Christ becoming human for you?
- What does it say about Christ coming to live in you? What does it suggest about you carrying Christ to your world? In what ways is Mary an example to you? Are Fra Roberto’s ideas of meditation on God’s truth useful to you: Disquiet / ‘conturbatio’ / Reflection / ‘cogitatio’ / Inquiry / ‘interrogatio’ / Submission / ‘humiliatio’ / Merit / ‘meritatio’)
SESSION 3 CONTEMPLATING THE CROSS
It’s not surprising that the Passion is the most represented theme in the San Marco frescoes. Christ’s Cross is central to our belief that God has given us Salvation. But as with the Annunciation’s emphasis on the truth of Christ’s Incarnation, the Cross held further, particular significance for the Dominicans beyond the doctrine of Salvation. Among the Cathars’ heresies, which St Dominic had worked to counter, was their lack of belief in either Christ’s physical death or Resurrection. They did not venerate the Cross, unlike Dominic who placed much emphasis on the Christian practice of revering the Cross as a foundation for our understanding of our position with God. Dominican paintings or sculptures of the crucifix
emphasise the mission of the Founder of the Order. The Cross was also significant in promoting Thomas Aquinas’ theology and spiritual practice. A popular Dominican legend described Aquinas praying before a Crucifix; it spoke to him and he was physically lifted into the air. Franciscans and Carthusians told similar stories of Francis and Bernard. Raymond of Capua’s biography of Catherine of Siena, similarly described her ecstasies and visionary experiences of Christ on the Cross after Mass, and her receipt of the stigmata. Catherine described the wounds of Christ shaking her heart. So many Dominicans expected meditation on Christ’s Cross to move them to religious ecstasy.
(CRUCIFIXION FRESCO CHAPTER HOUSE)
On the north wall of the Chapter House Fra Angelico’s great mural of the Crucifixion completed by Gozzoli was a constant reminder of the importance of the Cross to the Observant Order.
(SANTA MARIA NOVELLA CHAPTER HOUSE)
Fra Angelico’s design is a much simplified and more focused image of the Cross than the Chapter House frescoes of Santa Maria Novella, the Dominican’s Florence headquarters, which represented the crucifixion dramatically but was dominated by scenes of the triumph of the Dominicans as a preaching order; a propaganda image stressing their universal importance.
(CRUCIFIXION FRESCO SAN MARCO CHAPTER HOUSE)
By contrast the Observants’ fresco at San Marco focuses on the Cross as central to faith and central to all monastic Orders. It encourages one to be willing to suffer alongside Christ to promote his truth and the message of Salvation.
The Chapter House was the centre of monastic life, used for daily meetings, sacred readings, sermons, legal and financial transactions. Here novices were received into the Order,friars made their confession to the Prior, absolutions, penance, penalties and punishments were given in the sight of the religious Community. The mural emphasises that all this was witnessed & assessed by Christ on the Cross and the saints ranged around him.
(SANTA MARIA NOVELLA CRUCIFIXION)
Painting such a crucifixion in the San Marco Chapter House formed a continuity with the Chapter House fresco of their mother-house, Santa Maria Novella.
(SAN MARCO CRUCIFIXION)
But Fra Angelico followed Antoninus’ prescription to omit extraneous detain. We see no crowd of angels or unnecessary onlookers and focus on figures from Church History, like us dependent on the Cross. At the foot of the Cross are not just the normal biblical figures you would expect in a crucifixion scene, but 20 Christian worthies, perhaps derived from Antoninus’ Summa Historialis, a Compendium of Church History:
Prophets foretelling Christ’s coming and the events of the Passion.
In the frame are historical prophets Daniel 9:26; Isaiah 53:4
who pointed to the crucifixion:
Sybils representing the wisdom of the past, Theologians, saints associated with Florence and the Medici: John the Baptist, Mark, Lawrence, Cosmas and Damian - Cosimo de Medici’s patron Saints. Fathers of the Church, founders of different major Religious Orders, led by a kneeling Dominic: Augustine , Jerome, Francis, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ambrose, Benedict.
At the bottom is a genealogy of the Dominican Order:
17 great leaders, teachers and mystics, saints, scholars and popes on branches held by Dominic.
All present in some ways suffered for their faith and witnessed to the importance of the Cross for Salvation..
Originally the sky was blue. It is in its present state because Fra Angelico used a red medium, haematite as a binder for the azure pigment, and the pigment has flaked away. This red underpainting was never meant to be seen, but later restorers, believing it was the painter’s original conception, mistakenly enhanced it. It does give added drama, as though, as we do, we live and act under the blood of Christ.
THE MAN OF SORROWS – also known as ‘Imago Pietatis’.
The Dominicans, like the Franciscans, recognised the power of images of the Passion to reach people’s hearts as well as to teach the theology of Salvation. Devotion to the crucifix was intended as a reminder of Christ’s presence in the daily Mass. Through centuries of debate about the nature of the Eucharist, Dominican theologians promoted belief in transubstantiation. In 1264 Thomas Aquinas was commissioned to compose the liturgy for the recently established Feast of Corpus Domini, or Corpus Christi.
This fresco in the niche of Cosimo de Medici’s private cell recalls this. It was the background against which the sacrament was displayed for Cosimo’s private veneration. In Man of Sorrows images like this, Christ’s burial cloths are sometimes painted deliberately to resemble humeral veils used for raising the host or anti-pendium altar-cloths. The imagery specifically related the sacrificed body of Christ to his spiritual presence within the elements of the Mass. Although the Man of Sorrows iconigraphy had its origins in Byzantine art, it became especially associated in late mediaeval, Renaissance and Counter-Reformation art with the dogma of transubstantiation. A vision of this figure of the wounded Christ had supposedly been seen when Pope Gregory raised the Host, confirming to doubters that Christ was truly present within the sacrament. This was re-emphasised by another legend, the Miracle of Bolsena in 1263, when the priest apparently witnessed the elevated host bleed on the corporal during the Mass. I find that side of the tradition uncomfortable, but you can see why such images were used to encourage devotional recollection.
(CRUCIFIX CLOISTER)
A major painting of Dominic kneeling in humble adoration of the Crucifix c 1442 confronts one as one enters San Marco’s cloister. (A similar image is in the upper corridor near the dormitories). It originally appeared simpler: the marble border was added in 1628, when the surrounding frescoes were also added. As with the Annunciation upstairs this fresco marked the limit in the cloister beyond which secular visitors could not enter. Beyond was more sacred space. As with the Annunciation, friars, following Dominic’s example, would bow to this image whenever they passed.
(CRUCIFIX SIMPLIFIED)
Standing or kneeling before the Cross is another liminal space, a threshold, a place to recollect Christ’s sacrifice, the place where heaven and earth met in Christ’s body to bring about the mystery of our Salvation. The image, perhaps even more than the large fresco in the Chapter House, reminded friars of their reliance on the Cross, their embrace of the Cross in their own lives, their acceptance of poverty, suffering, humility and dependency, their willingness to follow the example of Christ, and the central importance of Salvation to their life, prayer and preaching. The Dominican vow of ‘charity’ included the vow to follow the way of God by being willing to go through to the supreme sacrifice for one’s neighbour as Peter Martyr had done. One of Dominic’s dictums was “Naked to follow the naked Christ”.
Catherine of Siena had emphasised the importance of ‘fervour’ particularly in devotion to the Cross and following the sacrificial way exemplified by Christ. In Raymond of Capua’s biography of Catherine of Siena, written in 1374, she was described as, in a vision, choosing a crown of thorns from Christ rather than a crown of gold, in order to be more like her master. Following Dominic and other Dominican saints, friars were intended to always reverence the crucifix or images of the Passion in prayer as they passed. In doing so they were taught to contemplate the magnitude of Christ’s suffering and reflect on its implications so they could more truthfully preach the Christian mysteries.
The cloister fresco fills the arch surrounding it. Christ is silhouetted against an azurite blue sky, not the dark sky of the Calvary story, but perhaps the sky of God’s eternity, which Salvation has opened to us.
Christ’s body is slightly foreshortened, as if seen from below. His eyes appear to be still alive, looking at the devotee. Rivulets of blood flow down the Cross and across the ground towards the viewer, bringing salvation towards us as in the Mass.
(BRUNELLESCHI CRUCIFIX)
Fra Angelico knew perspective from Alberti and Brunelleschi. His crucifixions are so similar to these that he may have studied the anatomy from Brunelleschi’s Crucifix or Masaccio’s Trinity, both of which he would have known in Santa Maria Novella.
(FRESCOES OF CRUCIFIXION TOGETHER)
Frescoes of St Dominic before the crucifix were also designed for the 7 novices’ cells in the South Corridor, one of the last convent buildings to be completed.
Many of these have been attributed to Angelico’s assistant Benozzo Gozzoli working from Fra Angelico’s drawings.
These frescoes seem to have been painted fast. From the joints in the fresco, we can see how much wet plaster was applied to paint into each day. Some appear to have been completed in just two days.
Novices lived in single cells like the friars, but were taught and prayed separately from the friars, instructed by a novice-master who oversaw their personal and spiritual lives and instructed them in the Order’s Rule, customs and liturgies. Humbert of Romans’ ‘Instructions for Novices’ provided very detailed rules, a curriculum for formation and themes for meditation and prayer.
Novices were taught to reverence the Cross, like all Dominicans following the example of their founder, Dominic, who humbled himself in prayer every time he passed a crucifix. The different kneeling poses before the Cross were adapted from Dominic’s teaching on prayer.
(NINE MODES MANUSCRIPT)
The different poses and gestures reflect the postures in Dominic’s De Modo Orandi Corporalieter Sancti Dominici– The Modes (or Ways) of Prayer a manual probably compiled about 1274, 50 years after Dominic’s death in 1221 (born 1170) by a friar who claimed to have watched his master praying. It was probably written in northern Italy, probably Bologna, the centre of the Order. The text was designed specifically for instructing novices, though it was used by the rest of the Order. This manuscript c. 1330 in the Vatican Biblioteca Apostolica: MS. Rossianus 3 illustrated 8 of the nine of these ways. In emulating Dominic’s posture before the Cross novices and friars were encouraged to meditate humbly on the enormity of their Saviour’s suffering, to be able to devote themselves o study, contemplation and mission as Dominic had.
Both Humbert of Romans and Antoninus wrote commentaries on Dominic’s 9 Modes. Humbert believed that disciplining our bodily pose could influence our spiritual sensitivity and understanding. He called genuflection, bowing, and prostrating oneself before the Cross “the bodily language of faith”. Humbert suggested the postures friars should adopt in most aspects of their everyday life. Novices should walk with their heads slightly bowed with humility, eyes down, necks bent forward. Such physical discipline seems strange many us today who value freedom and individuality. But it relates to mediaeval belief that outward discipline of body can affect our inner consciousness. Humbert believed, that we could read the state of another’s soul through their gestures and posture, and that our souls could be elevated to higher states through learning proper ways of holding the body. Our physical and psychological natures, the body and soul, were believed to be inter-related. Our bodily posture was thought to affect our spiritual well-being and our awareness of the spiritual world. Hugh of St Victor had written an earlier treatise on this union between the body and the soul. By imitating Dominic’s bodily motions in prayer, friars and novices hoped to experience similar rapture or spiritual agony to their founder. Consciously disciplining our outward selves was thought to help form our inner awareness.
(CRUCIFIXES TOGETHER)
Dominic’s relationship with Christ and his understanding of prayer is particularly expressed in these depiction of the saint in prayer before the crucifix. Aquinas regarded contemplation as a major goal of religious life. As I’ve said, he believed he learned more through contemplation than academic study. Contemplation for him and most Dominicans was not to go into a mystical or imaginative state but to apply mental discipline, thinking about scripture and theological truths and praying their application into your life. This, Aquinas believed, was the best way to developing spiritual maturity and wisdom.
In the novices’ cells, 7 of Dominic’s 9 modes of prayer are represented. The 2nd 4th and 9th modes are omitted, possibly because they relate to ordained friars more than novices. Cell 16, like the picture in the Cloister is a holistic representation of Dominic’s prayer-life and dependency on the Cross. The Novices’ frescoes share several similar features: the Cross is almost identical in each, all show Dominic kneeling before the Cross and all are framed similarly. All are painted on a simple toned background, which makes you focus on the position and meaning of the figures. The Cross is rooted in bare ground, simply painted, and the figure of Dominic is always kneeling. Possibly for compositional unity Fra Angelico altered the posture of a couple of Dominic’s modes: there was little space to show Dominic standing upright or prostrating himself. But I wonder if this is for more than compositional unity: perhaps Fra Angelico, under Antoninus’ guidance, was trying to help the novices internalise their prayers to consider not just the outward pose but the emotion on which the inner soul was to concentrate.
Unlike the large Chapter House mural these aren’t biblical Crucifixion scenes. They represent the crucifix as a catalyst for religious devotion. Franciscans or later the Carmelites or Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises contemplated by using the imagination to penetrate into biblical scenes. Most Dominicans taught that meditation was more a studying of and reflection on what scripture is saying.
Dominic was described as meditating for hours on what the Cross meant to him. The Novices were intended to emulate Dominic to strengthen their formation in prayer, contemplation, devotion and physical actions.
Dominic’s “Nine Positions of Prayer” expressed a friar’s relationship with God and were thought to lead to spiritual states:
(1st WAY: CELL 15)
- BOWING (1st Way), [Cell15] Bowing before the Cross or the altar was Dominic’s first practice in beginning devotion, remembering his position before God. Humbly bowing from the waist expressed reverence and humility. Fra Angelico doesn’t show the body in quite this position, but kneeling submissively. It has been suggested that if he had represented genuflection it might have been confused with the 4th Mode, which recollected celebrating the Mass. The novices were not yet ordained, so genuflection was represented in a friar’s cell [Cell10]. Instead Dominic here demonstrates kneeling with his hands crossed over his chest, not mentioned in descriptions of the 1st mode, but a gesture emphasising humble reverence in the presence of the Source of Salvation. It is the same gesture as Mary and Gabriel in the Annunciation submitting reverently to one another.
PRAYING FOR GOD’S MERCY (2nd Way), Dominic prostrated himself in confession. Lying face down before the altar or Cross expressed humility, and dependency helping us value what Christ has done for us. This mode isn’t represented in the novices’ cells as with the 4th & 9th modes.
(3rd WAY FLAGELLATION))
PENITENCE, HUMILITY, MERCY & SELF DISCIPLLINE (3rd Way) Dominic’s practice of self-flagellation encouraged the disciplining of the body as a sign of penance, standing or kneeling bare-backed before the Cross recollecting one’s sins or the sins of others. Franciscans and Dominicans practiced flagellation or self-flagellation, not for sadomasochistic reasons one hopes, but to discipline the body and mind. Remember that before becoming a Dominican novice.
Fra Angelico had been part of a penitent Carmelite confraternity that encouraged flagellation and in Florence there was a Dominican confraternity of lay-flagellants, the ‘disciplinati’or ‘battuti’. Early in the Dominican Order’s history flagellation became restricted to use in Chapter. Though Dominic apparently practised self-flagellation, the Observants discouraged self-flagellation or flagellation in private. In De Modo Orandi the practice was restricted to a communal ceremony administered before the community in the Chapter Room where there was a mural of Dominic holding a scourge.
It’s not a practice many would recommend today, though some still use it, but bodily self-discipline in other ways might help focus us, whether in fasting, refraining from certain actions or activities, denying ourselves for a time. There might be ways of interpreting self-discipline that individually help focus our spiritual and physical lives. The idea of disciplining our physical actions can demonstrate that God is Lord over our lives.
(Christ’s Mocking and Flagellation)
Paintings of Christ’s Flagellation recollected that Christ suffered similarly in winning our Salvation.
(FRIAR’S CELL)
- GENUFLECTION Compassion in Intercession: kneeling in Humility before the Cross in confidence in God’s Mercy is a very personal form of internalising worship (4th Way), It’s an action of recognising reliance on God as we pray.
- RECOLLECTIVE MEDITATION: (5th Way)
5. (CELL 21) Stretching in the form of a Cross, reflecting Christ’s pose (6th Way) [Cell 21], was one way in which Dominic implored divine power for great spiritual actions or before attempting great things like healing,
It was said that Dominic prayed in this way in anticipation of the miracles God would perform. He prayed in this position because he believed it was a way of coming to understand if only in part what Christ was praying on the Cross.
CELL 37 Cell 37 shows Dominic’s proper 6th position of prayer, standing before the scene of the Cross as in the Chapter House fresco. This cell may have been the lay-brothers’ Chapter room, a larger cell than most, opposite Cosimo’s, at the head of the night-stairs. Mary and John at the foot of the Cross are paired with Dominic, just as in the Chapter House fresco historic Church leaders are paired with biblical figures. It has been suggested that the images are portraits: Antoninus as St. Dominic and Fra Giuliano Lapaccini as Thomas Aquinas
- ECSTASY: Dominic would pray with his whole body stretched upwards towards heaven in prayer as if receiving something from heaven (7th Way) [Cell15] standing looking upward to the Cross in ecstasy.
- Antoninus wrote: “The seventh mode was when he was praying standing upright towards heaven as straight as an arrow shot from a bow, with his raised and joined hands extended strongly over his head…. And it is believed that his grace was then increased and he was carried away and implored God for gifts and graces for the Order.” (Tugwell ‘Nine Ways’ p.105 quoted Hood p.203)
8 (CELL 19) REFLECTIVE READING Sitting in the reading pose in recollection (8th Way) [Cell 7 & 19] Recollection through reading, emphasised the importance of study and scholarship in helping us to focus on truth. The Dominicans meant a slightly different practice when they talked about Meditation from that practised by the Franciscans. Franciscans, rather like later Ignatian meditation, used their imagination in prayer to feel themselves in the presence of the biblical story. The Dominicans emphasised meditating directly from scripture, asking for revelation about what the text was saying.
(CELL 7)
Thomas Aquinas sits beneath one of the crosses, with his book open as he regards the Cross in his mind and in Summa Theologia. In the fresco of the Mocking of Christ,(Cell 7) Dominic sits at the foot of Christ, meditatively reading and immersing himself contemplatively in the sufferings of both Christ and his Mother, who turns away from the scene, drawing the viewer in to consider the spiritual implications of the Cross in their own mind and how its meaning impacts on our whole lives. According to the Benedictine Rule the purpose of reading and study was not to learn as many facts as possible or gain knowledge. It was to allow yourself to be enlightened by God’s wisdom. The Dominicans saw study as prayerful, an important occupation to build faith.
(CELL 19)
An early biography of Dominic described him as: “working sweetly with his mind” over texts of scripture which often led him to weep with emotion. In cell 19 he holds the book in his hand, but is not seated at his desk, as in most Modes of Prayer illustrations.Instead he kneels, covering his eyes as he weeps in response.
(BOOK 9TH WAY)
- HOLY CONVERSATION: (9th Way). Dominic prayed while he walked and journeyed, either with companions or in solitude talking to God. He is represented in the Modes as setting out to the world to fulfill his mission of preaching.
(Cell 16) Cell 16 represents the whole of Dominic’s prayer life. It is summed up, like the crucifix in the Cloister, by Dominic embracing the Cross and all it means.
(MODO DE ORANDI)
It may seem strange today for an entire treatise to be written just expounding the founding father’s physical positions in prayer.But this demonstrates some the wholeness with which the Order regarded the human body, action and prayer.
Everything in some way is connected.
(SET OF ANGELICO’S CRICIFIXES)
What pose we choose for prayer is. I’m sure, not a problem for God. He hears and responds no matter how we pray;it is our sincerity that matters. But for Renaissance thinkers our sincerity was shown in our decorum, just as two generations ago you would be expected to wear best clothes to church, as a sign of respect for God. We recognise today how people’s body language communicates different things. Practices like Tai Chi or Yoga and prayer and relaxation practices of Eastern religions have shown that body pose and gesture can express and influence our psychological thoughts. Our bodily position can influence our concentration, and perhaps the direction our contemplation takes. Our pose may also speak to others among whom we pray, as Dominic’s pose seems to have spoken to and encouraged prayer in his contemporaries who watched him at prayer.
(DOMINIC HOLDING THE CROSS)
Augustinians and Dominicans believed that contemplating an image could bring the intellect, will and memory to spiritual life. An image did not just teach or help you recall intellectually; like emotive preaching it could work on the senses and convey to you something of the spiritual presence and reality of the truths it contained or illustrated.. So in Antoninus’ teaching the image had a slightly sacramental function. That was especially true in focusing on the Crucifix with its associations to Salvation and the Eucharist.
The Cross has a plethora of meanings for each of us. We probably change daily in our appreciation of what Christ’s death achieved and what it means in your life and mine. Perhaps as Aquinas might suggest we ought to finish this session not with an image but with words of scripture to contemplate… (1 Corinthians 1:18).. “The Cross is the power of God to those who are being saved”.
CRUCIFIX QUESTIONS FR CONTEMPATION:
- Dominic reverence of the Cross reminded friars of their reliance on the Cross, their embrace of the Cross in their own lives, their acceptance of poverty, suffering, humility and dependency, their willingness to follow the example of Christ, their receiving Christ daily in fresh ways through the Eucharist, and the central importance of Salvation to their life, prayer, preaching & ministry. The Dominican vow of ‘charity’ included the vow to follow the way of God by being willing to go through to the supreme sacrifice for one’s neighbour. One of Dominic’s dictums was “Naked to follow the naked Christ”. Might this refer to you?
- Might any of Dominic’s nine postures in prayer contribute to your practice of prayer or your appreciation of the place of the Cross and Salvation in your life?
2nd Way: PRAYING PROSRATE reliant on God for mercy
3rd Way: BODILY SELF DISCIPLINE out of penitence, humility and gratitude
4th Way: GENUFLECTION: Kneel humbly before the Cross confident in God’s mercy to you
5th Way: RECOLLECTIVE MEDITATION: Hands held out reverently or clasped as in
liturgy, listening to receive from God
6th Way: Stretched WIDE to understand Christ’s praying for the world from the Cross
7th Way: ECSTASY: Whole body stretched upwards to heaven receptive to God
8th Way: REFLECTIVE READING
9th Way: HOLY CONVERSATION: Prayer when walking, talking and preaching
SESSION 4 LOOKING FOR RESURRECTION
(COMBINATION RESURRECTION PAINTINGS)
Fra Angelico’s Resurrection scenes are among his most intriguing, partly because of the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection, but they are also among his most innovative, thought-provoking designs. Can they help us reach into the meaning of this mystery to us?
RESURRECTION : MARYS AT THE TOMB
Before we look at the paintings in detail let’s think why a Friar might contemplate the Resurrection and future life:
a/ To be assured of his belief and Creed: We say I believe in the Resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting quite lightly. But how can a preacher bring the Resurrection hope to others if not assured himself of the promise of life in Christ?
Mary searching the tomb to find Christ is like many of us: “What is all this about? Where is he?” Dominic worked hard to dispel the Cathar heresy that there was no Resurrection.
LAST JUDGEMENT
b/ Friars reflected on judgement keep himself pure: Thinking of the future benefits of heaven might help many resist temptations which might debar them from enjoying it. For the mediaeval/renaissance mind there was a real fear of hell. This encouraged strict religious discipline. Many resist this today as against the freedom which Christ has brought us into. I prefer today’s concentration on freedom but perhaps we’ve lost much of the sense of dependency on God’s grace for salvation and life, which was such an incentive towards purity for the Observant friars. Fear of what follows death also gave them an incentive for preaching and prayer, to bring their world to Christ.
HEAVEN
They reflected on the future life to help them live now as though already enjoying some of the benefits of salvation. In the theology of Fra Angelico’s time there was less emphasis than today on confidence in our assurance of salvation. Death was ever-present, war, plague and other diseases, illness, deaths in childbirth made life-expectancy more fragile than today. People were afraid of not being prepared for heaven, and not as assured of God’s love as we try to make them today. So their imagery of heaven, despite the limits of our knowledge of what life after death will be, was a huge incentive to work towards.
CHRIST IN LIMBO [HARROWING OF HELL]
This was in Cell 31 for the Lay Brothers.Icons of the Resurrection often show Christ breaking down the doors of Hell, releasing Adam and Eve and leading a variety of captive souls to a purified life. That’s depicted here: evils are squashed, demons are quivering, hiding and fleeing, the roof of the place of the dead is breaking up as Christ announces Good News and release to the Spirits in prison as in 1 Peter 3:19-20. But here the figures are more personal than in many judgement pictures. Rather than generalised they have individual personalities, the sort of detail you’d expect from a miniature illuminator. Art historians differ over whether this painting is by Fra Angelico himself or an assistant, perhaps Zanobi Strozzi, but it seems designed to show that God is interested in the individualities and personalities of those who are being saved. Our Salvation isn’t general, God is interested in you and I personally as well as the individuality of those to whom the friars and we minister. The portrait-like figures suggest that Christ is releasing individuals who have undergone hardships.
It reads slightly like the newsreels of groups being released from concentration camps. Adam’s face is careworn. They are all in the similar condition: the patriarch, a woman dressed penitentially in camel-hair, perhaps Eve, a younger praying man, from his dress it could be John the Baptist or Elijah, and an elder in robes, perhaps Moses the secular prophet or Aaron representing the priesthood. Perhaps they represent different types of people encountered daily by those in the convent. There is hopefulness and confidence on their faces as they move forward to the call of the Risen Christ from whom rays golden of light radiate. They all recognise their dependency on Christ and his winning for them and us the promise of Resurrection.
In contemplation we are meant to remember that we, like them are in that group and we are dependent on Christ and look to him. The light of Christ’s Resurrection shines on us. Adam’s nakedness like ours will be transformed to white robes of cleansing as Christ releases us. This is the literal fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy in Lk.1:78-9. In a way sense the Dominicans are followers of the commission of John the Baptist through Zachariah:
“The forgiveness of their sins, has come through the tender mercy of our GOD, by which the rising sun/son will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death and guide our feet into the path of peace.”
Just as John the Baptist was to be “a prophet of the Most High… to give his people knowledge of Salvation”the Dominican preacher was to bring people knowledge of Salvation by pointing them to Christ. That was to be the work of the Christians living in the convent. This was for a lay-brother’s cell, who needed assurance of his rescue by Christ as much as each friar. You can imagine the painter contemplating as he painted that this was his calling too and for his fellows in ministry: “to give people knowledge of Salvation. Lift people from darkness & the shadow of death and guide their feet into the path of peace.!”
It’s the calling of all of us who are followers of Christ's way.
We don’t get much impression of the darkness of limbo cave in which they have been living: apart from the demons, none of the horrors of hell from which threat they have been eternally rescued. What is important in the picture is its focus. the home to which they are going, much more stable than the crumbling rocks .
They almost seem to be entering a church: the Kingdom of God which we as a church should be building. Would that our Christian institutions were more like the Kingdom of God, rescuing people like this, allowing Christ to breaking down the barriers that keep people from him! This is our aim. Christ here is a model for the Dominican preacher and for us. We are called to go into the world and offer people hope and release.
NOLI ME TANGERE
Here’s the perfect example, to the Renaissance mind, of a saint who discovered release through Christ and his Resurrection. This painting in Cell 1 was probably painted Gozzoli. Both this and the Descent into Limbo are close in composition to the same subjects as represented in the Chapter House of the Dominican mother-church, Santa Maria Novella. Mary here is an individual released to new hope through recognising the Resurrected Christ and beginning to understand what Resurrection should mean for us. This cell was that of the friar who oversaw the duties and formation of the lay-brothers. Perhaps it suggests that he was to lead them as Christ led Mary to understanding and new life.
Aquinas called Magdalene ‘the Apostle to the Apostles’,the first to pass on or preach the message of the Resurrection to the disciples. He made her one of the Dominican patron saints. The Master of the Lay Brothers was to lead new disciples to discover the truth. He would direct those who tilled and hoed the convent land and gardens, which may be why Jesus is so clearly represented with garden implements. The palisade of the garden looks like a known space, perhaps the temporary wall was that of the new convent or one the friars might recognise. The master of the Lay-brothers is to create a garden where people meet the risen Christ, literally and metaphorically.
Mary Magdalene was frequently depicted in Dominican art. She was thought to symbolise Dominican life: She was a penitent. Antoninus advised women to take the contrite Magdalene as their role-model.
The biblical Mary of Magdala was released from possession. But often, as you’ll know, the mediaeval and Renaissance Church conflated her with a penitent prostitute, the woman taken in adultery, Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, and the hermit Mary of Egypt clothed in camel-skin (as in Donatello’s sculpture of Mary in the Duomo Museum, Florence).
- Conflating Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany, she was used to represent the contemplative life of reflective study, the ‘vita contemplativa’ as opposed to the active life of Martha.
- But the Dominicans also regarded her as an example of the ‘vita activa’, the ‘active life. Mary Magdalene was regarded as a patron saint of the Order, because Aquinas’ related Dominicans devotion to preaching and closely following Christ to Mary’s passing on the good news of Christ’s Resurrection. Among the many legends circulating about her were descriptions of Magdalene travelling to Gaul and converting the inhabitants to Christianity. Links were made to Dominic converting heretics by counteracting heresies like the Cathar’s disbelief in Resurrection.
- As the first to actually meet the Risen Christ, Mary’s witness to the truth of Resurrection made her significant as a communicator of divine truth. Fra Angelico’s paintings of ‘the Marys at the empty tomb’ and ‘Noli Me Tangere’reinforced this for contemplation. The Dominicans in preaching the good news of Resurrection followed her in witnessing to its reality.
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The picture suggests several themes for contemplation:- Blessed are those who believe without having seen or touched.
- Mary like the friar will take up Christ’s hoe to work in the world.
- Christ’s feet float on the world suggesting a different type of risen body from his physicality before death.
- The tomb from which he’s come is like the entrance to the cave of the dead in the last painting. Mary like us, has been rescued from such a fate.
- Mary will be like a straight tree in the garden of the church as all Christian examples are to be. One thing I find interesting is that each tree is of a different species. It suggests to me as one called to train other Christians, as did the master of the lay-brothers, that we are to train different individuals in varied ways that bring out their gifts, personal qualities and spirituality.
(HE IS NOT HERE FOR HE IS RISEN)
This is one of the strangest paintings of the three Marys at Jesus’ tomb that I know. On the surface it might appear a bit naïve: Its poses may derive from the amateur-acting of pageant plays. It’s been suggested that Giotto’s scenes may have derived from similar mystery-play sources. Jesus’ mother peers rather over-obviously into the empty sepulchre making very clear what the picture is about: “He is not here” and the angel points up to the vision of the Resurrected Christ who only we, with the spiritual insight of the angel can see: “He is risen”. It does look too literally risen, but that is one of Fra Angelico’s characteristics, he clearly and simply makes the meaning of his stories unambiguous.
Fra Angelico wasn’t just painting a Resurrection scene to tell the story. This is an image to promote meditation on a message. We are presented with a row of saints who witnessed the truth of Christ’s Resurrection. The contemplative is meant to soak in this truth and be assured, to be able to go out into the world to preach the reality of the Resurrection to others. Mary the mother of Christ, Mary Magdalene, and the two other women and Mary the mother of James and Joanna in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 24:10, Salome in Mark 16:1) are to be examples to us. We too are witnesses: Christ is no longer bound by earth. We are to trust a Christ who has been resurrected to bring us and our world hope, and who, ascended, is now in heaven ruling, working and praying for us. The figure of Dominic contemplating the scene reminded the friar and reminds us that we like the Marys and the Dominicans are meant to study and contemplate, to find out what resurrection means and how we are to present it to others. Like the Marys and the Dominicans we are to witness to others about the truth, meaning and implications of the Resurrection. I presume that is behind the name of THIS community of the Resurrection. Like the Marys we are to help our contemporaries trust in the truths of a God we cannot see.
So the picture is a challenge to us. The Marys went on to help found the Church. We are to carry on their ministry, knowing that they are there as witnesses watching and praying for us in heaven, while we keep responsibly to our task of emulating their message in the contemporary world.
LAST JUDGEMENT Museo di San Marco c1431
Our ministries and witness aren’t just about teaching facts. We are meant to be preparing people to know God better. This altarpiece was painted for the unfinished Oratory of Santa Maria degli Angeli next door to Lorenzo Monaco’s workshop, where Angelico probably spent some time training as a painter.
Santa Maria degli Angeli became a centre of mystical spirituality and scholarly humanist studies, especially under Ambrogio Traversari, the intellectual reformer of the Camaldolese Order. In 1431, the date of the altarpiece, Traversari had been elected Abbot General of the Order. His mystical piety aimed to reform the Church by returning theology to some of the teachings of the Greek Fathers. His translations of ancient Greek and Latin Christian texts first introduced the works of the Greek Fathers to many Renaissance scholars and theologians.
This painting probably owes much to Traversari’s translations of the Fathers’ writings about judgement and heaven, especially Basil the Great. It’s also influenced by:- Dominican interpretation of the separation of the blessed from the damned in Matthew’s Gospel.
- Dante – whose Divine Comedy Fra Angelico would have heard read aloud. In the mid 14th – late 15th Centuries it was read in the Duomo every Lent.
- Last Judgement paintings in the Strozzi Chapel by Nardo di Cione
- Andrea da Firenze’s great Last Judgement fresco in the Chapter House of the in Santa Maria Novella.
Fra Angelico’s image of the Last Judgement is again innovative, going beyond conventional imagery of Judgement and Paradise. He puts less emphasis on frightening people with destructive judgement and more on celebrating our restoration to the life of Paradise.
TOMBS
Most dominant in the picture is its central, stark reminder that we all face death. The tombs are bare and open. In the centre is a box-tomb decorated with of three crosses. This is probably intended as Christ’s empty tomb, reminding us that our resurrection and hope are prefigured in his resurrection. The two sides of the painting are thought to be by Fra Angelico’s workshop assistants.
RIGHT PANEL - JUDGEMENT
To the right, is a relatively conventional mediaeval representation of Judgement: Black demons drive or lead tormented figures away from Christ’s redeeming presence. This scene has compositional similarities to Ghiberti’s Baptistery door of Christ driving the money-Changers from the Temple.
DEVIL
The depiction of hell contains the gory imagery of it tortures that you’d expect from most artists brought up with mediaeval teaching and fear. The image of the devil gorging on human souls is close to the mosaic in the Florence’s Duomo Baptistery or Giotto in the Arena Chapel Padua.
PARADISE
The picture of the glories of heaven is rich, colourful and full of life and action. Thomas Aquinas imagined Paradise as a place of pure light devoid of physical objects like plants and populated by spiritual entities – a completely different dimension from the earthly creation we experience. That’s how Fra Angelico represented it in his altarpiece for San Domenico Fiesole, with which we’ll end today.But several Early Church Fathers, especially the sermons of Basil the Great imagined Heaven like this: a realm like Eden. Basil described the restored future Paradise of Heaven as a hill covered with plants and flowers. In this picture the flowering ground of heaven contrasts strongly with the desolate tombs of the dead and the bare unfruitful ground beneath those who are moving towards destruction.
LIPPI MADONNA OF THE FOREST
Fra Angelico’s near contemporary, Fra Filippo Lippi (1406 – 1469) painted for this Camaldolese Order an altarpiece for their other monastery in the hills north of Florence, sponsored by Cosimo de Medici. Lippi’s ‘Madonna of the Forest’ is also full of symbolic flowers, which may relate to the emphasis of the order’s spirituality.
FRA ANGELICO ANGELS
The angels are welcoming the Redeemed from many different religious Orders and lay people of different ranks to share unity in heaven. The abundantly flowering ground shows all as fruitful and in harmony. It brings us back to the Resurrection Garden where Christ met Mary Magdalene or the Annunciation Garden, where Mary’s enclosed garden abundant with flowers and healing plants symbolised that Christ was restoring us to a lost Paradise relationship with God.
LEFT PANEL - PARADISE
In the front two newly resurrected members of the Camaldolese Order and religious from several Orders are embraced by angels. Behind these monks, merchants and various lay people are led towards Paradise by other angels. Radiant figures, haloed by gold nimbuses, including popes, a cardinal and monks of various ranks gaze on Christ and the vision of two tiers of enthroned apostles and saints in heaven. Interestingly the heavenly vision is portrayed in different spatial depth to the human scene below.
Traversari admired the 6th Century mystic Pseudo-Dionysius, a main influence on the Neo-Platonists whose text ‘Celestial Harmony’ described Paradise as a place where the blessed souls dance with the angels. That’s what we see here on the left of the composition. Fra Angelico depicts Heaven as a place of fruitfulness and dance, where humans, saints and angels embrace and dance in harmony. The picture seems to represent all our 5 senses brought to greater life and awareness in heaven, the sounds of instruments, fragrance of flowers, delights of sight, the taste of nectar and the feeling of movement and dance all enhanced by the presence of God and spiritually brought fully alive.
I’m not personally sure how useful it is to try to imagine Heaven. We’d probably devise an existence to satisfy our own minds, full of our own ideas and aspirations rather than God’s priorities as no doubt Fra Angelico did when designing this imagery. But this idea of being fully vitalised is an enervating one. It gives us something to work towards in asking God’s Spirit to perfect our own lives and also encourages us to mission, to expand the Kingdom of God. That seems a major purpose of thinking about judgement and the future. We no longer try to frighten people into faith, but imagining future perfection gives us an incentive to live, work and pray towards building a Kingdom of God greater than anything we have ever had before.
In the upper roundel Christ is surrounded by angels, adored by Mary and John the Baptist. Life with him is what our ministry is working towards. Interestingly, though the angels are relatively small in the composition, all other figures are of the same size, perhaps showing the influence of humanist art like that of Masaccio, that all beings are all equal in the love of God.
PARADISE
If that 1431 Last Judgement painting was rather specific in imagining the details of heaven, the last picture we’re looking at leaves our future life wide open as a mystery as yet unrevealed: This predella in the National Gallery, London, was painted about 10 years earlier than the degli Angeli altarpiece, one of the early works created around his time as a novice at, Fiesole. It was the lower panel of an altarpiece for his Priory church, San Domenico. It represents Christ in glory adored by saints and angels c1422-3.
(SAN DOMENICO ALTARPIECE)
Above it the main panel represented the Madonna and Child with 8 Angels, Thomas Aquinas, Barnabas, Dominic and Peter Martyr. The main panel was greatly altered by Lorenzo di Credi in 1501 when the church was modernised and they wanted the style of the painting modernised too. It is hard to be certain of its original appearance, but imagine Mary, the Christchild and saints against a gold background like the predella. The main panel emphasises that the Observants lived and ministered under the eye, protection and prayers of Christ, Mary and these specific saints who were examples to them: Barnabas seems a strange saint to include but he was the Name-Saint of the benefactor of the convent, Barnabá degli Agli, who commissioned the altarpiece. The others are more universally inspirational: Dominic the founder of their calling and the constitution by which they lived and worked, Aquinas the supreme example of a Dominican scholar, theologian, preacher and defender of the truth, Peter of Verona, Peter Martyr, the first Dominican martyr, murdered for keeping true to his calling to defend the truth of the Gospel.
The narrow predella panels below, usually represented stories from the lives of the saints, but this image emphasises the glory of the friars’ calling, their responsibility to praise the risen Christ in worship and in life as they will in heaven, and the security being prepared for them after death, in the presence of the Dominican faithful who had gone before.
The gold surround isn’t just the artist using an old-fashioned gold background as in icons and early Renaissance altarpieces. It resembles the dimension of pure light, which Aquinas believed Heaven would be like. The subject matter may represent the Te Deum, or Aquinas’ anthem composed for the Feast of Corpus Domini, the celebration of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. The Te Deum calls for the praises of all the ranks in heaven:
Choirs of Cherubim and Seraphim, Prophets
Apostles Saints Martyrs
That seems to be what we have here: all are acclaiming Jesus as the “King of Glory”, who overcame death and opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all Believers.
The panels to the far right and left show ranks of portraits
of committed Dominicans who are examples to the friars.
One day they too will join this community of heaven.
DETAILS
Only the friars would have been able to see the fine detail of the predella when they knelt before the altar. But from afar, glowing in candlelight, it would have appeared as a gleaming host worshipping in the glory of Heaven. All the figures in the side panels face and adore Christ in the central panel. It contains 282 figures -angels, Hebrew Prophets, New Testament Saints, and Dominican worthies. Though each head is only the size of a finger-nail, many are identifiable from inscriptions, distinctive features, attributes or garments.
All have different physiognomies, many seem like portraits.
18 Dominicans 18 Top Mary 11 Angels Christ 14/15 Angels 12Top 14 Dominicans
17 Mid 1 15 Angels 22 Mid
14 13
4 Women 17 Lower 25 2 Angels 21 Angels 22 Lower 4 Women
This skill demonstrates Fra Angelico’s training in miniature painting for illuminated manuscripts.
The picture was designed to focus worship towards Christ. It would also assure the friars of their future: They, like us, were working now as their brothers and sisters had done for generations to extend this Kingdom. They and we are probably meant to recognise that one day our own faces will be among this crowd of faithful adoring Christ face to face in far greater glory. They are examples of true Christianity and its rewards, as we are to be to others.
It was designed to encourage people to prepare for the future and the mysteries of heaven by their life on earth. At San Domenico it was also designed to focus the friars towards preaching the Gospel, showing others the way to God’s Kingdom.
That is surely our focus as Christians. Our aim to grow spiritually is not just to develop our own spirituality and relationship with God, but to pray and build up others’ relationships with God by our part in God’s mission. We work with God’s Spirit towards building this Kingdom of God.
As you contemplate this as-yet unknowable dimension, think of yourself and those you love in the presence of the Trinity, imagine that you recognise there the greatness of Christ your brother, your Saviour and your God. We don’t know what that life will be like, but we are assured that Christ is preparing a place for us there. We are preparing here on earth, by our prayer, our mission and our worship for a place in this glory. AMEN
RESURRECTION QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION - Do you feel as assured of your place with God as Scripture and the paintings suggest that believers and followers of Christ should?
- Are there others for whom you feel a responsibility to whom you might convey Christ’s message of hope more effectively? How might you approach this? What are you looking forward to in heaven? Is there any way that you can live more in the light of that promise today?