Fra Angelico--the sweetest of all the Florentine painters--was a monk of Fiesole, whose real name was Guido Petri da Mugello, but becoming a Dominican he called himself Giovanni, and now through the sanctity and happiness of his brush is for all time Beato Angelico.

He was born in 1390, nearly sixty years after Giotto's death, when Chaucer was fifty, and Richard II on the English throne.

His early years were spent in exile from Fiesole, the brothers having come into difficulties with the Archbishop, but by 1418 he was again at Fiesole, and when in 1436 Cosimo de' Medici, returned from exile at Venice, set his friend Michelozzo upon building the convent of S.Marco, Fra Angelico was fetched from Fiesole to decorate the walls.

There, and here, in the Accademia, are his chief works assembled; but he worked also at Fiesole, at Cortona, and at Rome, where he painted frescoes in the chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican and where he died, aged sixty-eight, and was buried.

It was while at Rome that the Pope offered him the priorship of S.Marco, which he declined as being unworthy, but recommended Antonio, "the good archbishop" .-- That practically is his whole life.