Exhibition
One of the most complex and fascinating works by Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, better known as Beato Angelico (Vicchio di Mugello, c. 1395 – Rome, 1455), is the A Masterpiece for Milan 2023, an initiative now in its 15th edition.
The exhibition, made possible with the support of Fondazione Bracco as main sponsor, presents the extraordinary panel of the Armadio degli Argenti (Silver Cabinet) devoted to the Scenes from the Infancy of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Dispute with the Doctors, introduced by the Vision of Ezekiel, on loan from the Museo di San Marco in Florence, which holds the largest collection of works by Beato Angelico, one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance.
This is one of the doors of the Armadio degli Argenti, so called because the thirty-six panels that made it up were originally the outer doors of the wooden cabinet that held the votive offerings destined for the miraculous image of the Virgin in the Florentine church of the SS. Annunziata, still today among the most venerated in Florence.
Commissioned in 1448 by Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici, the panel (123 × 123 cm), painted between 1450 and 1452 – a period that saw Beato Angelico at the height of his career – presents an extraordinarily rich narrative sequence, a veritable illustrated Bible, in which every episode is framed above by a scroll bearing an Old Testament prophecy and below by the corresponding Gospel quotation.
In this miniature painted cycle, with the light-filled atmospheres and brilliant colours characteristic of Angelico, several scenes stand out: the delicate Annunciation, one of the painter’s favourite subjects, in which the dialogue between the angel with multicoloured wings and the Virgin in humble prayer takes place in a humanist loggia; the intimate and intense Nativity, with an extraordinary effect of artificial light; and the Circumcision, set in a temple that also reveals the painter’s awareness of the architectural innovations of the time.
Throughout the exhibition, the Museo Diocesano will organise a series of educational activities for adults and school students, as well as accompanying events such as workshops, lectures and much more.
