rom
cares, and that he whose work is connected with Christ must ever live
with Christ. He was never seen in anger among his fellow-friars, which
is a very notable thing, and almost impossible, it seems to me, to
believe; and it was his custom to admonish his friends with a simple
smile. With incredible sweetness, if any sought for works from him, he
would say that they had only to gain the consent of the Prior, and
that then he would not fail them. In short, this never to be
sufficiently extolled father was most humble and modest in all his works
and his discourse, and facile and devout in his pictures; and the Saints
that he painted have more the air and likeness of Saints than those of
any other man. It was his custom never to retouch or improve any of his
pictures, but to leave them ever in the state to which he had first
brought them; believing, so he used to say, that this was the will of
God. Some say that Fra Giovanni would never have taken his brushes in
his hand without first offering a prayer. He never painted a Crucifix
without the tears streaming down his cheeks; wherefore in the
countenances and attitudes of his figures one can recognize the
goodness, nobility, and sincerity of his mind towards the Christian
religion.

[Illustration: FRA GIOVANNI DA FIESOLE (FRA ANGELICO): THE ANNUNCIATION

(_Cortona: Gesu Gallery. Panel_)]

He died in 1455 at the age of sixty-eight, and left disciples in
Benozzo, a Florentine, who ever imitated his manner, and Zanobi Strozzi,
who painted pictures and panels throughout all Florence for the houses
of citizens, and particularly a panel that is now in the tramezzo[8] of
S. Maria Novella, beside that by Fra Giovanni, and one in S. Benedetto,
a monastery of the Monks of Camaldoli without the Porta a Pinti, now in
ruins. The latter panel is at present in the little Church of S. Michele
in the Monastery of the Angeli, before one enters the principal church,
set up against the wall on the right as one approaches the altar. There
is also a panel in the Chapel of the Nasi in S. Lucia, and another in S.
Romeo; and in the guardaroba of the Duke there is the portrait of
Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, with that of Bartolommeo Valori, in one
and the same picture by the hand of the same man. Another disciple of
Fra Giovanni was Gentile da Fabriano, as was also Domenico di Michelino,
who painted the panel for the altar of S. Zanobi in S. Apollinare at
Florence, and many other pictures.