Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Victorian Copies after Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico
copy of the Deposition in Museo San Marco, Florence
ca. 1854
oleograph on chine collé by Franz Kellerhoven
British Museum

Fra Angelico
copy of the Last Judgement (detail) in Museo San Marco, Florence
ca. 1858-86
color woodcut by Heinrich Knöfler
British Museum

Fra Angelico
copy of the Coronation of the Virgin in the Louvre
ca. 1850-60
oleograph on chine collé by Franz Kellerhoven
British Museum

"A corresponding change takes place in Michelangelo's writings.  Much of what has been said about his views in the middle period of his life applies even more strongly to his last years.  His approach to the world and the arts becomes even more spiritual, but at the same time more specifically Christian.  His religious feeling now combines the mystical conception of Neoplatonism with the intense belief in Justification by Faith which he learnt from Savonarola and the Contarini group.  But he talks less of an abstract divine essence and more of a God whom he addresses personally.  We may suppose that his comment on the paintings of Fra Angelico, which shows how much importance he attributed to Christian piety in an artist, was made about this time: 'This good man painted with his heart, so that he was able with his pencil to give outward expression to his inner devotion and piety, which I can never achieve, since I do not feel myself to have so well disposed a heart.'

– from the chapter on Michelangelo in Anthony Blunt's Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940)