Soul Eyes (Page 2)

Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro; he became Fra Giovanni when he entered the Dominican order. In his early paintings, the Renaissance hardly appears to have begun. Paintings like the early Crucifixion--which shows a semicircle of Roman cavalrymen and foot soldiers standing at the base of the cross and looking coolly upward as if waiting for Christ to die, while four holy figures in front of the cross support the Virgin, who has fainted--is a powerfully condensed demonstration of Auden's observation about how well the old masters understood the meaning of suffering. But it feels like a Gothic painting, giving no hint that the Renaissance is about to dawn. It is difficult to know how to respond to the Penitent Saint Jerome, in a panel from Princeton University, since Fra Angelico merely restored parts of it. The small, circular depictions of saints from the predella of an altarpiece said to date from 1417 are exciting only because we now know them to be the work of the young Fra Angelico.

On the other hand, it is difficult not to be touched by The Nativity, from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, or the tiny Virgin and Child With Four Angels, from the Detroit Institute of Art, whatever their art-historical significance may be. In The Nativity Mary and Joseph, as well as the ox and the mule, kneel in adoration of the luminous baby lying on a mat of golden rays. A quintet of angels has settled on the thatched roof, and the gold leaf of the sky conveys the sense of a new kind of dawn. It is a celebration of the divine and at the same time entirely human. In Virgin and Child Jesus looks like a fifth angel, and the Virgin's star-spangled mantle looks like a piece of the night sky. Her face displays the dreamy expression one sees on new mothers everywhere. From the perspective of the stone bench she is seated on, and the way the side walls of the manger converge toward a vanishing point, one can tell that the Renaissance has arrived. Space is now naturalistic; these scenes of holiness take place in the same world we live in.

Upon entering the upper level of the Lehman Wing, one faces a greatly enlarged panel from an altarpiece that still remains to be identified. The original can be seen on the lower level, together with several other panels that belonged with it. The catalogue essay devoted to this altarpiece--which tells when it was painted, for what site it was painted, what the subject of the main panels might have been--is a serious piece of scholarly detective work. The panel that has been reproduced and enlarged for the upper level serves another purpose. It helps define precisely at what point Fra Angelico emerged as the master of his period. And it inadvertently provides a test for determining which works belong to the period that made his name. The test: Any work that would be at home in San Marco belongs to Fra Angelico's prime. None of the paintings thus far discussed from the exhibition would pass that test, however engaging they may be. But this painting does pass the test. Any work that can stand up to the great Annunciation is Fra Angelico in his prime, if not at his peak.

The painting is called The Naming of Saint John the Baptist. An elderly man at the panel's left is seated in a walled garden, writing with great concentration. He is Zacharias, father of John the Baptist. There are six lovely women, wearing opulent gowns picked out in gold. One of them is Saint Elizabeth, holding the child destined to be John the Baptist, in a very different kind of garment than the shaggy skin in which he is conventionally portrayed. The biblical story partly illustrated by this scene, which viewers in Fra Angelico's time would have known, is that Zacharias has expressed doubts about his son's role, revealed by an angel, and has been struck dumb. His speech is restored when he writes: "John is his name." The little panel has the poetry of Botticelli's Primavera--beautiful women, beautifully dressed, are gathered in the open air in a flowered landscape under a blue sky. The work is luminous, and we can see what a remarkable colorist Fra Angelico was, something Hegel could not have gleaned from the engravings. All the panels that allegedly belong with The Naming of Saint John the Baptist show the same almost translucent robes. There is something of the Middle Ages in the enclosed garden, carpeted with flowers. But the organization of space, especially in the wall's perspective, implies the innovations of Masaccio and the spirit of the Renaissance. Two great periods in the history of art thus overlap in The Naming of Saint John the Baptist.

As, in fact, they do in much of Fra Angelico's work. Consider, for instance, the left panel of his Last Judgment, which shows a number of the saved dancing to Paradise in the company of angels. It is a vision of life as fine as could have been imagined. Men, women and angels are dressed exquisitely, their hair done up in elegant coiffures, wearing garlands as well as the nimbuses they deserve as tiaras of sorts, tracing the figure of a courtly dance, tripping across a flower-strewn park, indifferent to the torments of the damned on the facing panel, as they move in rhythmic circles toward eternal bliss. At the top of the panel, figures board a flight of clouds and move into a new and unimaginable state expressed by an expanse of golden emptiness. The physical beauty of the dancers, human or angelic, may be metaphorical, but it is a compelling advertisement for the rewards that await the faithful, and as art it is the high point of this show. As for their expressions, they do not look happy. They look appropriately solemn, perhaps reflecting on the test they have passed in life below, and relieved to have earned the glory they share with the angels.

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