Pius XII, The Art of Fra Angelico: Window into Heaven (April 20, 1955)

 [125] Address of Pope Pius XII at Opening of Exhibition of Paintings of Fra Angelico at the Vatican

In welcoming into Our dwelling so many masterpieces of Fra Giovanni of Fiesole it is Our intention not only to pay a special tribute of admiration to his genius, which reached the highest pinnacle of art by drawing inspiration from the mysteries of faith. It is also Our desire to revive the deeply religious and human message his paintings have preached to his own and succeeding generations, which have never tired of contemplating his symbolic images where beauty and harmony seem to transcend the summit of the purely human and to open as it were a window into Heaven.

Above all, We wish to express Our great pleasure at the extensive study inspired by the 5th centenary of his death. It has stimulated outstanding critics and authors to deepen and spread knowledge of the personality and work of Fra Angelico in noteworthy publications. Some of these have presented in a new and truer light the period and currents of thought and art which marked the first half of the 15th century. They are publications which redound to the honor not only of the arts but of culture in general and of religion itself.

Perennial witness

We wish also to express Our heartfelt gratitude toward each and all of those distinguished persons who responded with filial solicitude to Our desires and arranged that the works of Fra Angelico, cherished as incomparable treasures in the museums and galleries of various nations, be entrusted to U s for a while on this happy occasion. This has secured Us the pleasure of viewing them and at the same time the joy of being able to show them to Our beloved sons from all over the world who will be visiting Rome at this time. 

The present Exhibition is the first important collection of Angelico's works in one place, and fittingly enough in this Apostolic Palace, whose threshold the eminent man of genius crossed many times. The humble and pious Fra [126] Giovanni of Fiesole, as is well known, came here at the peak of his artistic maturity at the request of Our predecessors, first of Eugene IV, and later of the great patron of the arts Nicholas V, to whom the Renaissance owes much of its early beginnings. And here ono these walls Angelico immortalized some of the most vigorous creations of his artistic imagination, an honor and adornment of this Apostolic residence, and a perennial witness of the perfect accord between Religion and art. 

The homage rendered today, after five centuries, to this holy monk and consummate artist, gives added meaning to the well deserved tribute We gladly pay him, because, among other things, his memory and his work seem somehow associated with Our own laborious Pontificate. It is a pleasures to recall Our visit fifteen years ago to the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva where his mortal remains are cherished with pious devotion. But in a special way, Fra Angelico, who may be called the ecstatic painter of Mary Queen of Heaven, recalls the extraordinary favor Divine providence granted Our lowliness, that of honoring the Mother of God in singular ways. Among these was crowning with Our own hand the image of the Virgin, as he did so often in the ecstasy of art in masterpieces which throughout the centuries have remained models of celestial beauty.

Acclaimed in every age

And now Our high esteem for Fra Angelico, so many of whose works are here before us, would lead Us to make some analytical comment on his art. However, Our present condition permits Us only to touch briefly upon a few of its most characteristic aspects. We shall leave to the eminent critics the function and pleasure of going deeply into some of the questions which have always interested lovers of art since the age in which he flourished and especially since the science of the history and the criticism of art developed with its own methodology. It is inf act one of the great honors of Fra Angelico that in every age he has claimed the admiring attention of scholars. [127] Nor in fact could he have been overlooked by anyone attempting to trace the main avenues along which Western culture advanced; he is unquestionably one of the pillars of this culture, as a successful promoter of its progress and development as well as an interpreter of his own era.

While in the past and the present critical judgments have been divided in his regard, these judgments have been concerned only with secondary aspects of his personality or of the genesis of his art, or else have differed only in its interpretation. But no honest critic has ever questioned his essential attributes, which are universally recognized, namely, that he was a very great painter, of deep spirituality, a felicitous innovator, an effective, sincere and perfect artist. Although with the passage of time tastes and fashions change in the field of art, too, and although the search for new forms of expression often leads to a certain forgetfulness or disdain of the old, Fra Angelico, like all great and true geniuses, has never in any age suffered a lessening of the admiration he evoked both in the scholar and in the popular mind. His art is bound, it is true, to one time; it belongs to a specific era, succeeded by many, many others. But later developments are not to be considered as improving on or surpassing his art, as if it had lacked perfection or failed to attain its goal. The most modern scholars concur in this basic judgment, and have also resolved in his favor the long debated question as to whether he was a disciple of the Gothic tradition or a precursor of the humanistic renaissance. Fra Angelico was ready and prompt to assimilate the new revivifying currents of art, but he always strove to preserve for it the traditional religious character of its didactic and ethical aims. There is no doubt that he was one of the most representative links in the labor of transition from one period to the next.

Sermon and prayer

Similarly, his personality has been set in its true light, extricated from the popular and pious legend which depicted the fervent friar painting his Saints while absorbed in unconscious ecstasy, his brush guided by superterrestrial beings. This does not mean, however, that his profound religious sense, his serene and austere asceticism, nourished by solid virtue, contemplation and prayer, did not exercise a determining influence on his artistic expression, giving it the potency and immediacy with which it spoke to the minds of others and, as has frequently been noted, transmuting it into prayer, just as he was int h e habit of repeating "he who makes the things of Christ ought always to be with Christ" (G. Vasari, Vite dei piu eccell. Pittori, Scult. ed. Arch., Florence, 1878, t. II, p. 520).

As for whether or not he derives in certain respects from Giotto; what influence Masaccia had on him; with what criteria he resolved the new and difficult problems then debated around the theories of space and light; how he understood the return to classicism; whether he sided with Cennini, who considered that the function of painting was to discover the invisible, [128] and not with Alberti, who restricted the realm of art to the visible alone; whether he intended an explicit polemical stand against the neoplatonic current, which he unquestionably rejected — these questions are still objects of studies and research which do honor to those who conduct them. 

Thomistic in content and technique

The candid piety of Fra Angelico is rightly considered an essential basis for his efficacy as a painter. But still another basis is to be sought in his cultural formation, that is in the doctrine of the universe he learned in the school of the philosophia perennis and to which he adhered with clear and tranquil certitude. Not a few critics have rightly pointed out how Thomistic doctrine is reflected not only in the content of his paintings but also in his style and technique. Fra Angelico takes nature as his point of departure, one might say, like the great Doctor in his exposition of the "five ways." And he loves nature passionately as the work and the reflection of God. However, he insists on highlighting the aesthetic aspects of nature; he seems in fact to be striving boldly to fix upon it his own ideal of beauty, sought in devout contemplation of his supernatural world. The vision of creation in his aesthetic form is neither stunted nor incomplete, for he identifies the beautiful with the true, the good, the holy, the perfect, the chaste, almost in the same way that the Divine perfections, of which creatures are the reflection, are not really distinct in God but only more or less explicitly so because of the innate weakness of the created intellect.

The Alpha and the Omega

Likewise he has learned from the teachings of St. Thomas the great synthesis of the universe, which, varied as it is in the elements which compose it, takes its origin from God and returns to Him after having run its course in the form of an orbit radiant with harmony, beauty, truth and holiness. This synthesis seems reflected in those famous compositions in which delightful figures of angels, saints, friars and virgins form a crown for the throne of the Redeemer and his Mother.

Celestial light

Certainly Fra Angelico's painting is always religious, both in subject matter and in style and method of treatment. Accustomed to the tranquility of monastic discipline, and striving always for perfection in intention, in word, and in action, it is natural he should seek to attain it also in the techniques of his art, which, as a result, is always cleanly bright and serene. In his life, as in his paintings, there are no moments of exterior drama, but inner struggles, fought in complete resignation to the Divine Will and with calm confidence in the victory of good. The very light which he pours over his figures and through his backgrounds is measurable not so much in quantity as by its quality of purity; it is in so far as possible, a celestial light.

Spiritual lyricism

His themes are simple and [129] linear, patterned as it were on the style of the Evangelists. His figures always reveal an intense interior life. Their countenances, their gestures, their movements are all transfigured by it. As he narrates or expounds the divine mysteries to his audience, Fra Angelico is ever the skillful [sic] "preacher," seeking to elicit an immediate response with descriptive and decorative elements in order to speak more quietly to the inmost soul. When, on the other hand, his aim is to offer a subject for contemplation to his brother monks, practised [sic] in the meditation of supernatural truths, he is careful to eliminate any element of distraction, such as strong tones of light and color or the busy converse of too many figures and gestures, and his emphasis then is on the purely internal. The figures are sublimated in an ethereal, other-worldly lightness, the background is empty, the canvas is smaller, and the decorative elements so dear to him, like the gentle landscapes of his native Tuscany and the architectural forms created by Brunelleschi, disappear. The result is a spiritual lyricism, bursting from pure interior harmony, which still hovers in the cells and corridors of the convent of San Marco in Florence, whose walls alone would be sufficient to celebrate an artist's immortal glory.

On occasion, as in this "study" of Nicholas V and in other large altar pieces, he uses a monumental style but always within the measure allowed by his artistic purpose, become by now his unalterable canon of expression, namely, to speak of things divine in accents which are true and understandable but at the same time worthy of God and of his Saints.

Religion, a transhumanizing force

But what is substantially the aim of the picture language which Fra Angelico addresses to the children of his own and succeeding centuries? On the one hand, his purpose is to teach the truths of faith, convincing men's minds by the very force of their beauty. On the other, he aims to draw the faithful to the practice of the Christian virtues by setting before them beautiful and attractive examples. Because of this second purpose, his work becomes a perennial message of living Christianity, and, in a certain sense a sublimely human message based on the principle of the transhumanizing force of religion, by virtue of which everyone who comes in direct contact with God and his mysteries becomes like Him in holiness, in beauty and in bliss; becomes, that is, a creature according to the original design of his Creator. 

Model man—balanced, serene, perfect

Fra Angelico's brush, therefore, gives life to a kind of model man, not unlike the angels, in whom all is balanced, serene, perfect: a model man and Christian, rarely found perhaps in the circumstances of earthly life but still to be offered for imitation by the people. Look carefully at the Saints who surround Christ and the Virgin, or even the anonymous figures in his picture stories. They betray no intellectual uncertainties or torments; each of them enjoys the [130] calm possession of the truth, which he has attained by natural knowledge or by supernatural faith. Their will is oriented toward the good; the passions, reactions, emotions to which they are subject because they are human creatures, are always tempered by the inner control of the soul. The tears for the dead Redeemer represent indeed a bitter grief but not desperate anguish. The joy of the blessed is not yet abandonment to uncontainable exultation. The austerity of the penitents has no shadow of torment. The contemplative concentration of St. Dominic is quite different from the ecstatic abstraction which would erase his human personality. The vehemence of John the Baptist is controlled by the strong temper of his soul. This moderation in the passions and emotions is what Fra Angelico wished to preach to Christian souls. 

Positive goodness

A positive goodness, besides, clothes every one of his figures, be they angels, or saintly religious, or humble folk. His Madonnas breathe a material goodness even when seated in majestic grandeur on a throne. The angel who has received from God the tremendous duty of driving the first parents from Eden manages to lay a sword-free hand on Adam's shoulder, as if to give him courage and hope. Even the wicked judges and executioners of the martyrs have a certain air of goodness about them, as if they were conscious of being the instruments of God's glory.

It might be said, in fact, that the artist himself declares his inability to portray what is turbid or evil. Constrained at times to include in his world the darker elements of human reality, he avoids as much as possible their direct portrayal, as can be noted in the "Martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian" and in the "Last Judgment." The group of the damned in the latter painting is attributed by some to disciples of his school.

Man, in Fra Angelico's world, which is the world of truth, is naturally neither good nor holy. But he can and must become so, for holiness is easy and beautiful, since Christ, whose ultimate sacrifice he painted so often, died for this very purpose, His most holy Mother is the supreme example of it, the Saints rejoice because they have attained it and the Angels take delight in conversing with the Saints.

Reward of virtue

To win souls to the virtues he sets before them, he highlights not so much the effort of achieving them as the bliss that comes from possessing them and the nobility of those adorned by them. Thus the profound humility of the Virgin listening to Gabriel is expressed in her face with the same queenliness that illumines it as she is crowned by her Son. Thus both portraits of the Virgin bespeak the same queenliness, except for the slight hint of perturbation in the one, transformed into a delicate smile of joyousness in the other. In the condemnation of St. Stephen, virtue and passion confront each other in the persons of the accused and the judge respectively. But the accused humiliates the man of power, though seated on his throne, by the [131] sheer fearless strength of his faith. Fra Angelico is unsurpassed in weaving praises of other Christian virtues. This praise becomes perhaps a poem in the wonderful fresco here which might be called the apotheosis of poverty and misfortune endured with a Christian spirit. The blind man, the paralytic, the man covered with sores, the widow and the other poor who cluster about the holy deacon Lawrence draw from the Christian faith that fills them a shining dignity which their pitiful miseries cannot obscure. Perhaps one of the many delightful angels who grace his other pictures would not be out of place in this group of human creatures, who may be poor but whose soul is rich with serenity and hope.

World of peace and holiness

The world of Fra Angelico's paintings is indeed the ideal world, radiant with the aura of peace, holiness, harmony and joy; its reality lies int he future when ultimate justice will triumph over a new earth and new heavens (cf. 2 Pet. 3, 13). Yet, this gentle and blessed world can even now come to life in the recesses of men's souls, and it is to them he offers it, inviting them to enter in. It is this invitation which seems to Us to be the message Fra Angelico entrusts to his art, confident that it will thus be effectively spread. 

Art and religion

It is true that an explicit religious or ethical function is not demanded of art as art. If, as the aesthetic expression of the human spirit, it reflects that spirit in its complete verity or at least does not positively distort it, art is in itself sacred and religious, that is, in so far as it is the interpreter of a work of God. But if its content and aim are such as Fra Angelico gave his painting, then art rises to the dignity almost of a minister of God, reflecting a greater number of perfections.

Sublime possibility

We should like to point out to artists, who are ever dear to Us, this sublime possibility of art. For if instead the words and cadences of artistic expression were fitted to minds which are false, empty and confused, that is, unlike the Creator's plan, if, instead of lifting the mind and heart to noble sentiments, art excited the baser passions, it would indeed encounter some response and welcome, if only because of its novelty, which is not always a virtue, and because of the slim fraction of reality reflected in all human expression. But such art would be a degradation of itself; it would be a negation of its primary and essential character. Nor would it be universal and eternal, like the human spirit to which it speaks.

A message religious and human

In paying homage to the greatness of the artist and in inviting Our beloved sons to accept, almost as if disposed by Providence, the religious and human message of Fra Giovanni of Fiesole, Our mind cannot escape the anxious consideration of the present world in which we live, so different form that portrayed in these wonderful [132] paintings, win which the loftiest and truest human aspirations are sealed with exquisite artistry.

Ardently therefore do We hope that the breath of Christian goodness, serenity and Divine harmony that escapes from the works of Fra Angelico may pervade the hearts of all, while in pledge of more abundant grace from heaven, We impart with all Our heart Our paternal Apostolic Blessing.

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Source: Pius XII, "The Art of Fra Angelico: Window into Heaven," address, The Pope Speaks 2, no. 2 (summer 1955): 125-132.