ced age, which have suffered somewhat from restorations, show
vigour superior to that of his youth, along with a more adequate
treatment of the architectural perspectives. Naturally, there are a
number of works currently attributed to Angelico, but not really his;
for instance, a "St Thomas with the Madonna's girdle," in the Lateran
museum, and a "Virgin enthroned," in the church of S. Girolamo,
Fiesole. It has often been said that he commenced and frequently
practised as an illuminator; this is dubious and a presumption arises
that illuminations executed by Giovanni's brother, Benedetto, also
a Dominican, who died in 1448, have been ascribed to the more famous
artist. Benedetto may perhaps have assisted Giovanni in the frescoes
at S. Marco, but nothing of the kind is distinctly traceable. A folio
series of engravings from these paintings was published in Florence,
in 1852. Along with Gozzoli already mentioned, Zanobi Strozzi and
Gentile da Fabriano are named as pupils of the Beato.

We have spoken of Angelico's art as "pietistic"; this is in fact
its predominant character. His visages have an air of rapt suavity,
devotional fervency and beaming esoteric consciousness, which is
intensely attractive to some minds and realizes beyond rivalry a
particular ideal--that of ecclesiastical saintliness and detachment
from secular fret and turmoil. It should not be denied that he did not
always escape the pitfalls of such a method of treatment, the faces
becoming sleek and prim, with a smirk of sexless religiosity which
hardly eludes the artificial or even the hypocritical; on other minds,
therefore, and these some of the most masculine and resolute, he
produces little genuine impression. After allowing for this, Angelico
should nevertheless be accepted beyond cavil as an exalted typical
painter according to his own range of conceptions, consonant with his
monastic calling, unsullied purity of life and exceeding devoutness.
Exquisite as he is in his special mode of execution, he undoubtedly
falls far short, not only of his great naturalist contemporaries such
as Masaccio and Lippo Lippi, but even of so distant a precursor as
Giotto, in all that pertains to bold or life-like invention of a
subject or the realization of ordinary appearances, expressions and
actions--the facts of nature, as distinguished from the aspirations or
contemplations of the spirit. Technically speaking, he had much finish
and harmony of composition and colo