Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance
Curated by Carl Brandon Strehlke (Curator Emeritus, Philadelphia Museum of Art), this exhibition will investigate the beginnings of the Florentine Renaissance art in the 1420s and 1430s with the friar painter Fra Angelico at the center of the story.
Fra Angelico is one of the great masters of Renaissance art and responsible for its early achievements in Florence alongside the painters Masaccio, Masolino, Uccello and Filippo Lippi, the sculptors Ghiberti, Donatello, and Nanni di Banco, and the architect Brunelleschi.
The painter and Dominican friar was born in Florence in 1390 as Guido di Pietro da Mugello. He was called Angelico because of the serene religious attitude of his works fused with his extraordinary piety. More than 500 years after his death in 1455, he was beatified by the Pope John Paul II in 1982.
The exhibition will focus around The Annunciation, as well as two other recently acquired paintings by Angelico: the Alba Madonna and the Funeral of Saint Anthony Abbot. Both paintings come from the collections of the Duke of Alba.