Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance, Exhibition, Prado Museum, Madrid: 28 May-22 September 2019

This exhibition analyses the emergence of the Florentine Renaissance around 1420 to 1430, with a particular focus on Fra Angelico, one of the great Renaissance painters and a pioneering figure in the context of the artistic progress characteristic of Florence at this period, together with other great painters such as Masaccio, Paolo Uccello and Filippo Lippi, the sculptors Ghiberti, Donatello and Nanni di Banco, and the architect Brunelleschi.

The fact that Fra Angelico was a monk did not prevent him from working closely with other artists and he headed a large workshop that supplied paintings to both churches and important private clients in the city and elsewhere. This exhibition aims to reassess the chronology of the artist’s earliest works, characterised by an innovative quality comparable to Masaccio.

The exhibition is centred on The Annunciation from the Museo Nacional del Prado. Dated to the mid-1420s, this was the first Florentine altar painting in the Renaissance style to use perspective to organise the space and in which Gothic arcading is replaced by more rectangular forms, reflecting Brunelleschi’s architectural ideas in his designs for San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. Together with this masterpiece, the exhibition will include two further paintings by Fra Angelico recently acquired for the Prado: The Virgin of the Pomegranate and The Funeral of Saint Anthony Abbot.

Prado Museum

Calle Ruiz de Alarcón 23 Madrid