A spectacular two-venue exhibition dedicated to early Renaissance master Fra Angelico has opened in Florence, showcasing the most comprehensive collection of the artist's works ever assembled. The exhibition, running until January 25, 2026, spans both the Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco, presenting an unprecedented view of the Dominican friar-painter who lived from around 1395 to 1455.
The exhibition opens with a fascinating centerpiece at the Museo di San Marco: the Fiesole Altarpiece, originally installed on the high altar of San Domenico in the Tuscan hilltop town of Fiesole in the early 1420s. This remarkable work represents one of Fra Angelico's earliest and most heavenly achievements, created around the time when Guido di Pietro entered the Dominican order in Fiesole. Upon taking his vows, he became Fra Giovanni, a simple mendicant friar whose angelic skill as a professional painter, combined with his moral virtue, later earned him the nickname Fra Angelico.
The Fiesole Altarpiece underwent significant modifications over the centuries, most notably by painter Lorenzo di Credi in 1501. Di Credi replaced the original gold background with an expansive landscape, imposed classicizing architecture, and squared and slightly enlarged the panel to remove its Gothic arches. These interventions, while modernizing the work, created an unusual effect where Fra Angelico's central figures appear as cut-outs against the new background. As scholar Timothy Verdon observed, they look like "actors on the wrong set, or ancient statues in a modern parlor."
This major exhibition represents four years of careful preparation, featuring unprecedented loans from more than 70 museums worldwide and showcasing 28 newly conserved works. The collaboration between the Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco, located about 15 minutes' walk from each other, aims to present the most complete picture of Fra Angelico to date while challenging the notion that the artist was archaic. The Museo di San Marco, a former Dominican convent where Fra Angelico actually worked, houses the artist's celebrated frescoes that adorn the monks' cells, corridors, chapter house, and the cloister of Sant'Antonio.
One of the exhibition's greatest achievements is the reassembly of Fra Angelico's major altarpieces, most notably the San Marco Altarpiece from 1438-43. Curators successfully reunited dispersed predella panels and decorative components, many of which were looted during the Napoleonic era, revealing the true scale and scope of Fra Angelico's artistic invention. The artist's mastery is particularly evident in his narrative predella scenes, where he combines a theologian's clarity with considerable spatial gymnastics, enhanced by sophisticated gold tooling and embellishment that both emanates and reflects light.
The bright, airy rooms of the Palazzo Strozzi present most of the altarpieces as "one blazing symphony of gold and precious pigment after the next." This presentation strangely emphasizes the cut-out quality of Fra Angelico's figures, which are delineated by their gorgeous garments, individualized features, and gilded halos. The display creates a sense of both physical detachment and spiritual self-containment, reflecting the exhibition's focus on the physical construction and arrangement of the altarpieces themselves.
A particularly striking room is devoted to silhouetted crucifixes, where Fra Angelico's large-scale works echo polychrome sculpture through robust modeling that reflects the influence of Masaccio. The exhibition includes works by fellow Florentine artists Lorenzo Monaco and Pesellino, creating a comprehensive view of the artistic milieu. Visitors often find themselves longing for the shadowy apses or flickering candlelight that would have originally animated these monumental figures.
The exhibition's organization is primarily thematic with a loosely chronological structure. A notable highlight is the palazzo's opening room, devoted to the Strozzi family's sepulchral chapel in Florence's Santa Trinita church. Fra Angelico's dazzling Santa Trinita Altarpiece (Deposition from the Cross) from 1429-32, usually housed at the Museo di San Marco, stops visitors in their tracks with its vision of Florence as the new Jerusalem.
Artistically, the exhibition places Fra Angelico at a crucial turning point in Florentine art, between the courtly International Gothic style exemplified by older contemporaries like Masolino and Gentile da Fabriano, and the more classicizing approach introduced by Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio. The goldsmith and sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti serves as a bridge between these two styles, demonstrated in the majestic Linaioli Tabernacle from 1432-33, a collaboration between Ghiberti and Fra Angelico where Ghiberti provided the gilt and polychromed marble frame.
Against this backdrop of artistic influence and collaboration, Fra Angelico emerges not as a revolutionary but as a courtly artist who served the celestial court rather than earthly patrons. This divine purpose is most vivid in the dormitory of the Convent of San Marco, located on the first floor of the building designed by Florentine architect Michelozzo and funded by the ruling Medici family. Each of the 44 cells contains frescoes executed by Fra Angelico and his assistants in the early 1440s, including a private cell used by Cosimo de' Medici for retreat.
In these monastic cells, Fra Angelico achieves an almost minimalist naturalism while creating visions that seem to materialize from mere plaster. With each fresco illuminated by modest window light and constrained by a limited palette, the true miracle of Fra Angelico's art becomes palpable. The intimate setting allows visitors to experience the spiritual intensity that the artist brought to his religious calling.
Critical reception has been overwhelmingly positive, with Jason Farago of The New York Times calling it a "momentous and inexpressibly beautiful exhibition" and describing it as "a miracle of an event, a one-time-only opportunity." Matthew Holman of The Florentine praised the "astonishing" visual impact and the opportunity to rediscover an artist who was "more progressive and cerebral than his popular reputation for prettiness suggests." Tickets are priced at 16 euros with concessions available, and the exhibition continues through January 25, 2026.
