His life and work have been celebrated for centuries, yet only recently has Fra Angelico’s fundamental importance in the development of European painting been fully appreciated.

In commemoration of the five hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Fra Angelico (about 1395–1455), one of the foremost artists of the Italian Renaissance, The Metropolitan Museum of Art set out to reexamine his career and to establish a more historically accurate profile of the innovative, extraordinarily gifted "angelic friar," in order to dispel the myths and legends that have eclipsed the details of his life. New documentary research and standards for attributions, developed over the last three decades, provided the impetus for this reappraisal—only the second major exhibition of Fra Angelico's art ever held, and the first since 1955. Comprising about seventy-five paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations ascribed to Angelico and spanning the period from 1410 to 1455, as well as about forty works by his collaborators, this presentation includes several newly discovered paintings and a number of new proposals for reconstructions of important, dispersed altarpieces. Additionally, drawings by the master are analyzed in terms of their original function and in the context of discussion of the artist's workshop, its identifiable members, and their respective contribution to its artistic output. In essays and related entries, the first seven sections of the catalogue follow the course of Angelico's career. The study opens with his earliest, largely undocumented, activity as a painter (in the 1410s), before he joined the Dominican order, emphasizing those works that reflect his artistic, intellectual, and spiritual milieu. In dealing with the paintings of the 1420s, many of which will be unfamiliar to the general public and are the subject of widespread disagreement among scholars regarding dating and attribution, the authors attempt to establish their chronology within the master's oeuvre. The artist's mature, late production, punctuated by working sojourns in Rome, was centered around the altarpieces and frescoes—in Florence, Fiesole, Cortona, and Perugia—for which he is best known, but that cannot be lent to traveling exhibitions. Thus the focus here is on the masterpieces on a more intimate scale, such as the small, narrative predella panels and the many hauntingly beautiful images of the Virgin and Child, a subject to which he returned throughout his career. The essays and entries in the last four sections concern five of Angelico's assistants and followers: Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, Zanobi Strozzi, Pesellino, the Master of the Sherman Predella, and Benozzo Gozzoli. All of the approximately 120 works that are the subjects of the entries are shown in full color and are augmented by many large details and illustrations of comparative works. A comprehensive selected bibliography and an index complete the volume.

Research Assistant Furio Rinaldi examines a selection of drawings by Fra Bartolomeo now on view in the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery.

In 1934 the Italian government lifted restrictions governing the gabled Barberini Collection in Rome, making it possible for two intriguing fifteenth-century paintings to be put on the international art market. Within just two years both had been sold—one to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the other to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Neither their authorship nor their subjects were certain, but their ambitious depiction of architecture no less than their discursive, anecdotal approach to narration made them unique among Early Renaissance paintings. Who was their author? What was their function? How to explain their mastery of perspective and their sophisticated architectural settings? Building on over a century of scholarship as well as completely new archival information, this catalogue proposes answers to all three questions. In doing so, it examines the art of Florence in the 1440s and the work of, among others, Fra Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, Luca della Robbia, and Michelozzo. It then turns to the introduction of Renaissance style north of the Appenines, in the region of the Marches, and to the culture of the court at Urbino in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, dominated by its ruler, Federico da Montefeltro, the humanist-architect Leon Battista Alberti, and the sublime painter Piero della Francesca.

Formidable traditions governed the representation of the Crucifixion and other Passion scenes, and yet Italian painters continually renewed them through creative engagement with established conventions.

The first American retrospective devoted to the work of the great Italian Renaissance artist known as Fra Angelico (1390/5-1455) – and the first comprehensive presentation of his work assembled anywhere in the world in half a century – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 26. More than 50 public institutions and private collections in Europe and America will participate in the landmark exhibition, which commemorates the 550th anniversary of the artist's death. Fra Angelico will feature nearly 75 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations from throughout his career, supplemented by 45 additional works by his assistants and closest followers. Highlights of the exhibition include recently discovered paintings and new attributions, paintings never before displayed publicly, and reconstructed groupings of works, some of them reunited for the first time.

The first American retrospective devoted to the work of the great Italian Renaissance artist known as Fra Angelico (1390/5-1455) – and the first comprehensive presentation of his work assembled anywhere in the world in half a century – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 26. More than 50 public institutions and private collections in Europe and America will participate in the landmark exhibition, which commemorates the 550th anniversary of the artist's death. Fra Angelico will feature nearly 80 drawings, paintings, and manuscript illuminations from throughout his career, supplemented by 45 additional works by his assistants and closest followers. Highlights of the exhibition include recently discovered paintings and new attributions, paintings never before displayed publicly, and reconstructed groupings of works, some of them reunited for the first time.