[2] He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence,[3] then worked in Rome and other cities.

Vasari wrote of Fra Angelico that "it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.

"[2] Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro in the hamlet of Rupecanina[8] in the Tuscan area of Mugello near Fiesole, not far from Florence, towards the end of the 14th century.

The earliest recorded document concerning Fra Angelico dates from 17 October 1417, when he joined a religious confraternity or guild at the Carmine Church, still under the name Guido di Pietro.

The former Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, now a state museum, holds several manuscripts thought to be entirely or partly by his hand.

He trained also with master Varricho in Milan[11] Despite quite a few moves of the convents where he lived, this did little to constrain his artistic output, which rapidly acquired a reputation.

In 1436, Fra Angelico was one of a number of the friars from Fiesole who moved to the newly built convent or friary of San Marco in Florence.

He was one of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the city's governing authority (or "Signoria"), and founder of the dynasty that was set to dominate Florentine politics for much of the Renaissance.

But in the San Marco Altarpiece, the saints stand squarely within the space, grouped in a natural way as if conversing about their shared witness of the Virgin in glory.

Vasari suggests this might have been when Fra Angelico was offered the Archbishopric of Florence by Pope Nicholas V, to turn it down, recommending instead another friar.

[14] From 1447 to 1449 Fra Angelico was back at the Vatican, designing the frescoes for the Niccoline Chapel for Nicholas V. The scenes from the lives of the two martyred deacons of the Early Christian Church, St. Stephen and St. Lawrence may have been executed wholly or in part by assistants.

[2][15] In 1455, Fra Angelico died while staying at a Dominican convent in Rome, perhaps on an order to work on Pope Nicholas' chapel.

I, Giovanni, am the flower of Tuscany.Apelles (see main article) was a highly renowned painter of Ancient Greece, whose output, now completely lost, is thought to have centred chronologically around 330 BCE.

The English writer and critic William Michael Rossetti wrote of the friar: From various accounts of Fra Angelico's life, it is possible to gain some sense of why he was deserving of canonization.

He led the devout and ascetic life of a Dominican friar, and never rose above that rank; he followed the dictates of the order in caring for the poor; he was always good-humored.

What makes this a Renaissance painting, as against Gentile da Fabriano's masterpiece, is the solidity, three-dimensionality and naturalism of the figures and the realistic way in which their garments hang or drape around them.

[13] The series of frescoes that Fra Angelico painted for the Dominican friars at San Marcos realise the advancements made by Masaccio and carry them further.

Away from the constraints of wealthy clients and the limitations of panel painting, Fra Angelico was able to express his deep reverence for his God and his knowledge and love of humanity.

[13] Vasari relates that Cosimo de' Medici seeing these works, inspired Fra Angelico to create a large Crucifixion scene with many saints for the Chapter House.

Subsequently, Fra Angelico demonstrated an understanding of linear perspective particularly in his Annunciation paintings set inside the sort of arcades that Michelozzo and Brunelleschi created at San' Marco's and the square in front of it.

[13] When Fra Angelico and his assistants went to the Vatican to decorate the chapel of Pope Nicholas, the artist was again confronted with the need to please the very wealthiest of clients.

The walls are decked with the brilliance of colour and gold that one sees in the most lavish creations of the Gothic painter Simone Martini at the Lower Church of St Francis of Assisi, a hundred years earlier.

Benozzo took his art further towards the fully developed Renaissance style with his expressive and lifelike portraits in his masterpiece depicting the Journey of the Magi, painted in the Medici's private chapel at their palazzo.

Apart from the lineal connection, superficially there may seem little to link the humble priest with his sweetly pretty Madonnas and timeless Crucifixions to the dynamic expressions of Michelangelo's larger-than-life creations.

They were works of large scale and exactly the sort of lavish treatment to be expected in a Vatican commission, vying with each other in the complexity of design, number of figures, elaboration of detail and skilful use of gold leaf.

[13] Within the cells of San'Marco, Fra Angelico had demonstrated that painterly skill and the artist's personal interpretation were sufficient to create memorable works of art, without the expensive trappings of blue and gold.

In the use of the unadorned fresco technique, the clear bright pastel colours, the careful arrangement of a few significant figures and the skillful use of expression, motion and gesture, Michelangelo showed himself to be the artistic descendant of Fra Angelico.

[13] Many pictures include Dominican saints as witnesses of the scene each in one of the nine traditional prayer postures depicted in De Modo Orandi.

Worldwide press coverage reported in November 2006 that two missing masterpieces by Fra Angelico had turned up, having hung in the spare room of the late Jean Preston, in her terrace house in Oxford, England.

[24] Preston, an expert medievalist, recognised them as being high-quality Florentine renaissance, but did not realize that they were works by Fra Angelico until they were identified in 2005 by Michael Liversidge of Bristol University.