Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance
As part of the Museo del Prado’s bicentenary celebration, Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance is an important retrospecitve of the Florentine Renaissance master, centered around two works from the museum’s own collection: the newly restored The Annunciation (1425-26) and the recent acquisition The Virgin with the Pomegranate (ca. 1426).
Curated by Carl Brandon Strehlke, curator emeritus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition focuses on the decade of 1420-30 with compelling examples by Fra Angelico as well as painting, sculpture and drawings by artists active his milieu such as Masaccio, Masolino, Donatello and Ghiberti. Fra Angelico is one of the first household names to be collected by Americans, starting from Isabella Stewart Gardner who brought the Assumption and Dormition of the Virgin back to Boston in 1899. More ambitious than the Fra Angelico retrospetive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005 – the first dedicated to the artist in the United States – the current exhibition brings together 82 works, including key from over 40 institutions worldwide. ❖