Fra Angelico1443
The Annunciation (San Marco)
The fresco at the head of the dormitory stairs — the first image the friars saw each morning on the way to their cells. Convent of San Marco, Florence.

Depicted passages
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.
