"What pains me most," writes the late Sir Joseph Crowe in the Nineteenth Century for October, 1896, "is to think that the art of Fra Filippo, the loose fish, and seducer of holy women, looks almost as pure, and is often quite as lovely as that of Fra Giovanni Angelico of Fiesole."

If Rio and others, presumably biassed by the same theory, are inclined to see Lippi's moral depravity betrayed in every stroke of his brush, yet the more general and truer verdict accords him a place among the great masters of his age, albeit beneath Angelico and some others.

It is in regard to the matter expressed, rather than to the mode of expression, that we have a right to look for a difference between such men as Lippo Lippi and Fra Angelico.

Why then is there not a more distinctly marked inferiority in the religious art of Lippi to that of Angelico?

First of all, the art of such a man as Angelico falls far more hopelessly short of his ideal.

Perhaps it is in some hint of this hidden wealth of unuttered meaning that skilled eyes find in Angelico what they can never find in Lippi.

And so it seems to us that, after all, there is nothing to surprise or pain us in the fact that "the art of a Fra Filippo, the loose fish, looks almost as pure, and is often quite as lovely as that of Fra Giovanni Angelico of Fiesoli.

Of the Ascetics we have, among others, Frà Angelico, Castagno, and Giovanni di Paolo.

His master, Angelico (worthy the name!), never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic nature remains unapproached, unapproachable: it is only his, for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse which stamped itself there.

Angelico's angels are unearthly, not so much in form as in sentiment; and superhuman, not in power but in purity.

But you should see the pictures of our holy Father Angelico, to whom the angels appeared constantly; for so blessed was the life he lived, that it was more in heaven than on earth.

Their faces, too, are most wonderful; for they seem so full of purity and majesty, and withal humble, with an inexpressible sweetness; for, beyond all others, it was given to the holy Angelico to paint the immortal beauty of the soul.

" "I belong to the San Marco in Florence, of which you may have heard," said Father Antonio, "and am an unworthy disciple of the traditions of the blessed Angelico, whose visions of heavenly things are ever before us; and no less am I a disciple of the renowned Savonarola, of whose fame all Italy hath heard before now.

They supply an element which, except in the work of Fra Angelico, was defective at Florence; but to the Florentines was committed the great charge of interpreting the spirit of Italian civilisation in all its branches, not for the cloister only, or the oratory, but for humanity at large, through painting.

Still less had Fra Angelico.

While the artists around him were absorbed in mastering the laws of geometry and anatomy, Fra Angelico sought to express the inner life of the adoring soul.

It is clear that we must look not to Fra Angelico but to Masaccio for the progressive forces that were carrying art forward to complete accomplishment.

Fra Angelico, now that we know all Masaccio can teach, has a quality so unique that we return again and again to the contemplation of his visions.

We have to turn aside and land upon the shore, in order to visit the heaven-reflecting lakelet, self-encompassed and secluded, called Angelico.

Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico, but in no sense the continuator of his tradition, exhibits the blending of several styles by a genius of less creative than assimilative force.

The school of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Ghirlandajo, Perugino, even Signorelli, remained within the sphere of symbolical suggestion; and their work gained in dignity what it lost in intensity.

[210] The earlier frescoes of Fra Angelico, on the roof, depict Christ as Judge.

By Fray Angelico Chavez.

Fray Angelico Chavez (A); 21Oct74; R588593. R588594.

These, however, were treated by painters who were wanting in earnestness of faith, and in their delusion they took for examples Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico da Fiesole, and others like them, even holding them in greater esteem than the truly great masters who followed.