nd the innate character of his style, he displays
a new tendency, and learns to give life to his figures, not only
by the expression of purity and sweet ecstasy, but in finer
particularization of form and action which he reproduces in more
material style.

His clear diaphanous transparency of colouring is not used from lack
of technical ability, but to approach more nearly to his ideal of
celestial and divine visions, and succeed in a species of pictorial
religious symbolism.

In the midst of his calm and serene compositions Fra Angelico has
figures in which a healthy realism is strongly accentuated; figures
drawn with decision, strong chiaro-scuro and robust colouring, which
show that he did not deliberately disdain the progress made in art by
his contemporaries. Indeed we should err in believing that Fra
Angelico was unwilling to recognize the artistic developments going on
around him, and the new tendencies followed by his eminent neighbours
Ghiberti, Brunelleschi and Donatello. It was not so; but he only
profited by the movement as far as he deemed possible without losing
his own sentiment and character; thus giving a rare example of
self-knowledge.

Perhaps he divined that if he had followed the new current too
closely, it would have carried him farther than he wished to go; that
the new manner would have removed him for ever from his ideal; in a
word, that too intense study of the real, would have diminished or
entirely impeded fantasy and feeling. He instinctively saw these
perils, and therefore kept himself constant to his old style, and
while perfecting himself in it, he still remained what he always had
been, and what he felt he should be.

Though constrained to repeat to excess the usual subjects, too
traditionally drawn, "he often," as Burckhardt writes, "understood how
to avoid in the features of his saintly personages that aspect of
abstract impersonality, which had hitherto marked them, and to animate
them with delicate and individual life. He succeeded in giving a new
character to the time-honoured types used in preceding artistic
representations. To prove this it is sufficient to cite the St. John
Baptist--one of Fra Angelico's finest creations."

He modifies the traditional type of Christ according to his own faith
and feeling. Deriving it from Giotto, with improvements gathered from
Orcagna, he excels both masters, impressing on it a divine character,
and giving to the face of the Man God a swe