Fra Angelico: The San Marco Frescoes

Paolo Morachiello

ISBN 10: 0500237298 / ISBN 13: 9780500237298

Published by Thames & Hudson, NY, 1996

About this Item

Gilt spine title, gilt publisher device ft cover. 344 pages, color plates throughout. Weight 5 lbs extra postage required. More ART titles = abebooks>booksellers>amber unicorn>keyword= art Size: Sm 4to 10-7/8 x 9-7/8. Seller Inventory # 000895

Bibliographic Details

Title: Fra Angelico: The San Marco Frescoes

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, NY

Publication Date: 1996

Binding: Hard Back Blue Cloth

Condition: Fine to As New

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine to As New

Edition: First Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

To visit the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence is a uniquely moving and satisfying experience. Here, around 1440, in the tiny whitewashed cells of the friars, in the corridors, cloister and chapter house, Fra Angelico and his assistants - who included the young Benozzo Gozzoli - painted a series of images centred upon the theme of Christ's sacrifice. Conceived and executed as aids to meditation and prayer, they have taken their place among the most exhilarating masterpieces of Western art. Their deep spirituality springs from the Christian theology that was the basis of Fra Angelico's life, but in their humanity and in elements of their style, Fra Angelico comes close to the circle of Masaccio and Ghiberti, at the dawn of the Renaissance. 'The sources of his feeling', wrote the great art historian Bernard Berenson, 'are in the Middle Ages, but he enjoys his feelings in a way which is almost modern.'
This magnificent book is an unprecedented record of the frescoes as they appear today, after a long and successful campaign of restoration that is described by Giorgio Bonsanti. An introduction to the building, and to the painter, is followed by a fully illustrated survey of every picture, with details shown in actual size. Enabling us to come closer than ever before to his work, Fra Angelico: The San Marco Frescoes reveals the artist's tenderness and strength, his freshness of colour and his extraordinary luminosity and subtlety of modelling, and is a superb visual record of this great artistic and spiritual ensemble.

About the Author:

Paolo Morachiello is Chair Professor of the History of Architecture at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice.