Word: cortona
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...first began to show the unmistakable signs of genius. Only a year after he took his final vows, his convent was thrown into turmoil as a result of the rival claims of three Popes. The Fiesole monks saw their prior arrested, and fled for safety to Foligno, then to Cortona. But from this nine-year period of exile, no record of Fra Angelico's activities has survived. One theory is that, on the Dominicans' return to Fiesole, Fra Angelico worked under Lorenzo Monaco, a Camaldolese monk famed for his manuscript illuminations. Supporting this theory is the fact that...
...Christ child tenderly reassures his mother, is one of the few paintings in which Fra Angelico yielded to the popular taste for the sentimental. The future glory of Fra Angelico's work is first declared in the Annunciation scene done for the church of San Domenico in Cortona (see p. 54). Here the Virgin sits serenely with hands folded across her breast in a gesture that sums up one of the great credos of monasticism: "Thy will be done...
This great theme of renunciation Fra Angelico made his own in life and art, raising it to a level rarely if ever surpassed. Its highest expression, and one of the world's great paintings, is the Cortona Annunciation. Only a trace of the early miniature painter remains in the loving care given the rich golden tapestry of the Virgin's chair; for the rest, Fra Angelico's painting has been awakened by the dawning Renaissance. With rows of Brunelleschian columns, he achieves perspective, relegating symbolism to the background, where the distant figures of Adam and Eve state...
...small scenes Fra Angelico painted in translucent colors for the predella (base) of the Cortona Annunciation are each in themselves small hymns of praise to the Virgin. A small section in the panel of Mary's Visit to Elizabeth (see p. 34) made art history. It is the first identifiable landscape in Italian painting, a view of Lake Trasimeno as seen from Cortona...
...Rome, but it is clear that Fra Angelico, who had moved through the full cycle from medieval illuminations to the heroic architectural vision of the Renaissance, had done his greatest work for his fellow monks in the monasteries of San Domenico and San Marco and the church at Cortona, where he had lived and worshiped...