Fra Angelico1442
The Agony in the Garden
Christ kneels in Gethsemane while the apostles sleep — Mary and Martha sit reading in an adjacent cloister, the contemplative life paired with the prayer of Christ. Convent of San Marco, Florence.
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About Fra Angelico
1395–1455 · Italian
Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro; Beato Angelico) was a Dominican friar of San Domenico (Fiesole) and later San Marco (Florence). His gold-ground panel altarpieces (the Prado and Cortona Annunciations, the Linaioli Tabernacle, the Louvre Coronation) and the small meditative frescoes he painted in the cells of San Marco — begun in 1438 under Prior Antoninus — made him the defining early Renaissance painter of contemplative prayer. He painted the Chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican Palace between 1447 and 1449. Beatified in 1982.