The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (15 page)

 
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(1486–1530).
Florentine painter. The epithet ‘del sarto’ (of the tailor) is derived from his father's profession; his real name was Andrea d'Agnolo di Francesco . After an apprentice-ship under
Piero di Cosimo
he soon absorbed the poised and graceful style developed by Fra
Bartolommeo
and
Raphael
in Florence during the first decade of the 16th cent., and following the departures of
Leonardo
, Raphael, and
Michelangelo
(all of whom had left Florence by 1509) he became established with Bartolommeo as the leading painter of the city. Apart from a visit to Fontainebleau in 1518–19 to work for Francis I, Andrea was based in Florence all his life, although he probably visited Rome soon after his return from France, and made short visits else-where. He excelled as a fresco decorator (there are outstanding examples in Florence in SS. Annunziata and the Chiostro dello Scalzo), and he also painted superb altarpieces (
The Madonna of the Harpies
, Uffizi, Florence, 1517) and portraits (
A Young Man
, NG, London). His reputation was largely made and marred by
Vasari
, who said that Andrea's works were ‘faultless’ but represented him as a weakling completely under the thumb of his wicked wife. In Robert Browning's poem on the painter (1855) and in a psychoanalytic essay by Freud's disciple Ernest Jones (1913) attempts are made to link a supposed lack of vigour in his mellifluous art with these traits of character. This, however, is hardly just and a good deal of Vasari's account of Andrea's private life has been shown to be factually inaccurate (the scandalmongering is mainly in the 1550 edition of his book and was suppressed in the 1568 edition). Andrea has suffered from being the contemporary of such giants as Michelangelo and Raphael, but he undoubtedly ranks as one of the greatest masters of his time. In grandeur and gracefulness he approaches Raphael, and he had a feeling for colour and atmosphere that was unrivalled among Florentine painters of his period. He also numbers among the finest draughtsmen of the Renaissance (the best collection of his drawings is in the Uffizi). Certain features of his art foreshadow the
Mannerist
experiments of his great pupils
Pontormo
and
Rosso Fiorentino
. The many other artists who trained in his busy workshop include
Salviati
and Vasari.

 
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(1928–95).
British painter. He studied at the
Slade
School under
Coldstream
, 1949–53. A slow, fastidious worker, he concentrated on ambitious figure compositions, subtly handled and often with an underlying emotional tension. He shunned publicity and was little known to the public until an
Arts Council
exhibition of his work in 1980, after which he achieved a considerable reputation. In the mid-1980s he had a change of direction with a series of huge, brilliantly coloured landscapes featuring Ayers Rock in Australia. See also
SCHOOL OF LONDON
.

 
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(
c.
1395–1455).
Florentine painter, a Dominican friar. Although in popular tradition he has been seen as ‘not an artist properly so-called but an inspired saint’ (
Ruskin
), Angelico was in fact a highly professional artist, who was in touch with the most advanced developments in contemporary Florentine art and in later life travelled extensively for prestigious commissions. He probably began his career as a manuscript
illuminator
, and his early paintings are strongly influenced by
International Gothic
. But even in the most lavishly decorative of them all—the
Annunciation
in the Diocesan Museum in Cortona—
Masaccio's
influence is evident in the insistent perspective of the architecture. For most of his career Angelico was based in S. Domenico in Fiesole (he became Prior there in 1450), but his most famous works were painted at S. Marco in Florence (now an Angelico museum), a Sylvestrine monastery which was taken over by his Order in 1436. He and his assistants painted about fifty frescos in the friary (
c.
1438–45) that are at once the expression of and a guide to the spiritual life of the community. Many of the frescos are in the friars' cells and were intended as aids to devotion; with their immaculate colouring, their economy in drawing and composition, and their freedom from the accidents of time and place, they attain a sense of blissful serenity. In the last decade of his life Angelico also worked in Orvieto and Perugia, and most importantly in Rome, where he frescoed the private chapel of Pope Nicholas V in the Vatican with
Scenes from the Lives of SS. Stephen and Lawrence
(1447–50). These differ considerably from the S. Marco frescos, with new emphasis on the story and on circumstantial detail, bringing Angelico more clearly into the mainstream of 15th-cent. Italian fresco painting. Angelico died in Rome and was buried in the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, where his tombstone still exists. His most important pupil was Benozzo
Gozzoli
and he had considerable influence on Italian painting. He painted numerous altarpieces as well as frescos, several outstanding examples being in the S. Marco museum. His particular grace and sweetness stimulated the school of Perugia, and Fra
Bartolommeo
, who followed him into S. Marco in 1500, had something of his restraint and grandeur.
Vasari
, who referred to Fra Giovanni as ‘a simple and most holy man’, popularized the use of the name Angelico for him, but he says it is the name by which he was always known, and it was certainly used as early as 1469. The painter has long been called ‘Beato Angelico’ (the Blessed Angelico), but his beatification was not made official by the Vatican until 1984.

 
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