Diane Tucker’s blog, the Shy MuseumGoer, has a new posting about Blessed Fra Angelico. The pictures are beyond lovely and her descriptions are illuminating, as always. https://theshymuseumgoer.com/2025/11/15/explore-fra-angelico-paintings/

Diane Tucker is the kind of person who takes a friend to the museum, and pretty soon has half a dozen other people following her around, pretending it’s just coincidence that they are always within earshot. So go read her article and enjoy this glorious artist.

Diane mentions a special exhibit that is going on in Florence right now, including tours of the San Marco monastery, where Blessed Fra Angelico lived. He painted more than forty frescoes on the walls of individual cells for the monks who lived in them, to assist in their contemplation of Jesus. Frescoes can’t be moved without divine intervention so a tour of the actual monastery/convent is the only way to see these images in person. I’ve seen reproductions of a few of those frescoes because the Faith and Life catechism series uses some of them in its pages. Here’s one of the larger ones painted in San Marco along with a very useful description of who is who. https://www.christianiconography.info/Florence/sanMarco/madonnaChildSanMarco.html

Pope Saint John Paul II beatified Fra Angelico in 1982. It caused a bit of stir because normally the process uses written records of a person to show their faithful adherence to Christ. In this case the Pope said to look at Fra Angelico’s pictures. They were painted with the specific desire to increase faith in those around him. Local veneration of Blessed Fra Angelico has gone on for hundreds of years, but Pope Saint John Paul wanted to bring him to the attention of many more people.

There’s a story in my family that my great-grandfather took his wife to the Louvre around 1900, and when they had seen three pictures he dragged her away. He supposedly claimed that three pictures was the most that you could profitably look at in a day. If this is not your attitude here are a few more links to pictures by Blessed Fra Angelico.

https://www.nga.gov/artworks/401-entombment-christ

https://www.theflorentine.net/2025/10/01/painted-with-piety-fra-angelico-exhibition-review/

https://www.ncregister.com/features/fra-angelico-masterpiece-restored

The Healing of Palladia by Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian. Fra Angelico. National Gallery of Art, DC. public domain

State of the author. I finished my edits and Death Comes to the Science Fair is being formatted. The cover is done, I think. It will be out before Christmas but I’m not sure how much before.