VI
FRA ANGELICO
1387-1455
The revived study of antiquity which had taken so deep a root in Florence, soon began to exert its influence upon the development of painting; but during the first half of the fifteenth century, Christian traditions remained supreme in art, modified as they were by the closer study of nature and broader conceptions of human life that prevailed. Even the Platonic philosophy, which found so congenial a home among the humanists of the Medici's immediate circle, tended towards Christian idealism, and men like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola were at pains to prove that the doctrines of Christ and Plato were one and the same. With all their love of pleasure, the Florentines were essentially a serious, deep-thinking race; and never were ideas more freely expressed in art, never were sculptors and painters more profoundly influenced by religious motives, than at this period. The expression of thought and emotion, rather than perfection of form, was Donatello's aim, and the purest spiritual feeling animated Luca della Robbia's art. Above all, it was in the work of a contemporary painter and a protégé of the Medici, the Dominican artist, Fra Angelico, that the deepest mysteries and highest
