Fra Angelico

This beautiful book, published in conjunction with the first major exhibition of Fra Angelico's work since the cinquecentenary exhibition of 1955 in Florence, will feature more than seventy paintings, drawings and manuscript illuminations, covering all periods of the artist's career, from around 1410 to 1455.

Also included will be fifty selected works by his assistants and closest followers.

Fra Angelico ('the angelic friar'; c. 1390/95 - 1455) was one of Renaissance Florence's leading painters.

In addition to his celebrated altarpieces and frescos in Florence, Fiesole, Cortona, Perugia and Rome, Fra Angelico also completed many masterpieces on a small scale, including paintings, drawings and illuminated manuscripts.

His predella panels, the small narrative scenes included beneath large altarpieces, are among the most innovative creations in fifteenth-century Florence, while his images of the Virgin and Child still retain the inspirational immediacy and presence that first secured the artist's reputation as the premier painter of his age. Research undertaken in the last fifty years now allows scholars to reconstruct a more historically reliable biography of Fra Angelico that goes beyond the legends and traditions to establish his position as not only one of the greatest masters of the fifteenth century, but also as one of the most intellectually accomplished painters who ever lived.

Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 25 October 2005 to 30 January 2006.