Madonna and Child, early 20th century copy

After Fra Angelico (1400–1455)

Italian

Oil and tempura on panel

Original (1437) is in the Pinacoteca, Perugia, Italy

St. Mary’s Hall, Boston College

Fra Angelico was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance who combined the life of a Dominican friar with that of an accomplished painter. His reputed piety and the calm of his paintings brought him the names Angelico and Beato. He probably began his career as a manuscript illuminator. His early paintings are strongly influenced by the International Gothic style, an aesthetic that dominated Europe for nearly a century around 1400, and was characterized by bright colors, courtly elegance, naturalistic rendering of detail, and flat, decorative objects.