Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico: San Marco, Florence by William Hood, 123 pages

William Hood remarks that Bl Fra Angelico enjoyed an advantage rare among Renaissance artists - as a Dominican friar, he worked exclusively for the Order and therefore never had to worry about finding new commissions.  His frescoes for the cloister of San Marco have an advantage as well, remaining in their original context despite the transition of the building from convent to museum, a process completed by the departure of the last friars in 2014.  In addition to detailing the techniques employed, Hood carefully explicates the relationships of the frescoes to one another, to the daily life of the convent, to contemporary movements within the Order of Preachers, and to the political realities of Renaissance Florence, considerably enlarging the reader's understanding of the painter's radiant work.