Fra Angelico (Giovanni da Fiesole)

In 1436 Fra Angelico moved to the newly founded monastery of San Marco in Florence. The following year he was commissioned by the powerful Cosimo de’ Medici (pictured) to decorate the monastery with religious pictures. Besides painting altarpieces, Fra Angelico adorned the corridors and the friars’ cells with religious frescoes. These solemn, simply executed works served more important, more practical purposes than mere decoration: they were for the order’s community to pray and meditate.

From the page of Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Thomas Aquinas, Barnabas, Dominic and Peter Martyr