The Sublime Perfection of Beato Angelico

Giovanni da Fiesole was one of the most important Italian painters of the fifteenth century, an artist who knew how to embrace the perspective innovation of Renaissance painting, bringing with him the history and artistic tradition cultivated in the Middle Ages by Giotto, Masaccio and his predecessors. It is no coincidence that Giovanni was soon called Angelico and was made "almost a saint" by the Catholic Christian tradition, so much so that the name by which he is known throughout the world is that of Beato Angelico. At the end of October of this year and until the end of January 2024, one of his most extraordinary and most precious works of art arrives in Milan. We are talking about a square wooden tablet, just 123 centimeters on each side, which is one of the 36 surviving panels of the very famous Argenti Wardrobe, a sacred door that adorned the Florentine church of SS. Annunziata and which today is kept in the Museum of San Marco in Florence. A square of sublime perfection, a unique and incredible work of art, where within the nine boxes into which it is divided it depicts a very rich narrative sequence, a real illustrated Bible, in which all the episodes are framed, at the top, from a cartouche with an Old Testament prophecy and, below, a quotation from the corresponding Gospel. In this miniature pictorial cycle, with atmospheres imbued with light and dazzling colors characteristic of Angelico, the delicate Annunciation stands out, one of the painter's favorite themes in which the dialogue between the Angel with colorful wings and the Virgin in humble prayer takes place in a humanistic loggia, the intimate and intense Nativity, with an extraordinary effect of artificial light, and the Circumcision, set in a temple which also reveals the painter's update on the architectural novelties of the time. Among the many exhibitions that crowd Milan in these months, this is certainly a rare gem that the most curious art lovers will not miss.