Seen together, the works in this retrospective reveal Fra Angelico's remarkable range. Adept at every scale and medium, he was anything but a dutiful pedant.--Christian K. Kleinbub "The Brooklyn Rail"

The altarpiece, and its history, provokes an exercise in looking -- to hold in your mind's eye all the pieces that used to make up the whole. To accept the work, without these parts, for what it is right now. And to view it through Renaissance eyes, building, for a moment, a slower, sensitised relationship to a devotional image, painted for a specific site, instead of through the bombardment and constant contextualisation of images to which our modern eyes have become more accustomed.--Imogen Savage "The Financial Times"

[A] blockbuster exhibition.--Elisabetta Povoledo "The New York Times"

"A once-in-a-generation exhibition in Italy shows how the Renaissance painter believed something with his whole heart, and then made it manifest."--Jason Farago "The New York Times"

To see Angelico's art in situ, and in such abundance, is an extraordinary experience - and one that is not limited to the exhibition. These works are activated by their context, literally in some cases: several scenes are set in spaces that look like the convent itself, with its restrained classical style and plain stuccoed surfaces, creating a sort of mise en abyme, while in the sacra conversazione Angelico painted in the dormitory corridor, the oblique shadows cast by the columns align with the direction of light from the real windows. You can walk along this corridor and peer into each cell, taking in the frescoes - some austere, some almost lavish - that once guided the devotion of its occupants.--Anna McGee "London Review of Books"

By including not only the central scenes but reassembling the small, narrative panels--or predellas-- typically occupying the lowest register, [the curators have] allowed viewers to see Fra Angelico's compositions in all their complex, multifaceted splendor.--Cammy Brothers "The Wall Street Journal"

[Fra Angelico's] surviving legacy is radiant enough to brighten our own troubled times.--Ingrid G. Rowland "The New York Review of Books"

The veiled symbolism of the artist's marble and stones has largely flown under the radar, but these mystical depths are too profound to miss out on.--Daniel Larkin "Hyperallergic"

The artist who emerges from these galleries is possessed of an exacting artistic skill and an omnivorous mind, who continued to refine pictorial solutions across media, location, and workshop structure throughout a 40-year career. Among all this splendour, it's hard to find room for improvement.--Hannah Silver "Apollo"

Publisher: Marsilio Arte

Pub date: 2026-01-27

Length: 456 pages