Fra Angelico | Page 3

both recall the older artists of the "trecento" in the perspective, which is often incorrect, and out of proportion. But how far superior is Fra Angelico when the work of both in its full aspect is compared!
Fra Angelico has, it is true, conventional forms, and there is a certain sameness in his heads with their large oval countenances; the small eyes, outlined round the upper arch of the eyebrow, and with a black spot for pupils, sometimes lack expression, or have a too monotonous one, and the iris is often lost in the white of the cornea; his mouths are always drawn small with a thickening of the lips in the centre, and the corners strongly accentuated; the colour of his faces is either too pink or too yellow; the folds of the robes (often independent of the figure, especially in the lower part) fall straight, and in the representations of the seated Virgin expand on the ground, as if to form the foot of a chalice. But in his frescoes these faults of conventional manner almost entirely disappear, giving place to freer drawing, more life-like expression, and a character of greater power.
We will not repeat with Vasari that Fra Giovanni perfected his art from the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel; but we do not doubt that he too felt the beneficent influx of the new style, of which Masaccio was the greatest champion, and that he followed it, leaving behind, up to a certain point, the primitive giottesque forms. There is in his art, the great medi?val ideal rejuvenated and reinvigorated by the spirit of newer times. Being in the beginning of his career, as is generally believed, only an illuminator, he continued, with subtle delicacy and accurate, almost timid design, to illuminate in larger proportions on his panels, those figures which are often only parts of a decorative whole. But in his later works while still preserving the simplicity of handling, and the innate character of his style, he displays a new tendency, and learns to give life to his figures, not only by the expression of purity and sweet ecstasy, but in finer particularization of form and action which he reproduces in more material style.
His clear diaphanous transparency of colouring is not used from lack of technical ability, but to approach more nearly to his ideal of celestial and divine visions, and succeed in a species of pictorial religious symbolism.
In the midst of his calm and serene compositions Fra Angelico has figures in which a healthy realism is strongly accentuated; figures drawn with decision, strong chiaro-scuro and robust colouring, which show that he did not deliberately disdain the progress made in art by his contemporaries. Indeed we should err in believing that Fra Angelico was unwilling to recognize the artistic developments going on around him, and the new tendencies followed by his eminent neighbours Ghiberti, Brunelleschi and Donatello. It was not so; but he only profited by the movement as far as he deemed possible without losing his own sentiment and character; thus giving a rare example of self-knowledge.
Perhaps he divined that if he had followed the new current too closely, it would have carried him farther than he wished to go; that the new manner would have removed him for ever from his ideal; in a word, that too intense study of the real, would have diminished or entirely impeded fantasy and feeling. He instinctively saw these perils, and therefore kept himself constant to his old style, and while perfecting himself in it, he still remained what he always had been, and what he felt he should be.
Though constrained to repeat to excess the usual subjects, too traditionally drawn, "he often," as Burckhardt writes, "understood how to avoid in the features of his saintly personages that aspect of abstract impersonality, which had hitherto marked them, and to animate them with delicate and individual life. He succeeded in giving a new character to the time-honoured types used in preceding artistic representations. To prove this it is sufficient to cite the St. John Baptist--one of Fra Angelico's finest creations."
He modifies the traditional type of Christ according to his own faith and feeling. Deriving it from Giotto, with improvements gathered from Orcagna, he excels both masters, impressing on it a divine character, and giving to the face of the Man God a sweet gentleness which is truly sublime. These qualities reach the highest grade in the "Coronation of the Virgin" at the Convent of San Marco, and in the picture at Pisa[8] where the Saviour is represented standing upright, in the act of blessing with his right hand, while in the uplifted left he holds a golden cup.
He is represented full face, in all his majesty, his features of an exquisite sweetness and nobility,--a grand figure, which has all