Fra Angelico, 'The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

Hi there and welcome to this week's Christian Are Today's video and this week we are looking at Fra Angelico's presentation of Jesus in the temple which was executed around 1440, is a fresco and is in the convent of San Marco. So first of all who is Fra Angelico? So he was called Guido di and he was born in Tuscany about 1390-1395. We don't know the exact birth year but it's sort of late 14th century and he chose the name of Fra Giovanni when he joined the Dominican convent of San Domenico in Fiesole at about 1417. It's only actually after his death in 1455 that he was praised as the angelic painter and posthumously called Fra Angelico. We can say that Fra Angelico was one of the main painters of the early renaissance in Florence and he actually pioneered many of the stylistic trends from that period including the rational treatment of pictorial space, the volumetric modelling of forms with light and shadows. So far from being a humble reclusive monk Fra Angelico was really a significant artist and one of the most groundbreaking artists of Italian renaissance art and the climax of his career came with the commission of frescoes for the convent of San Marco in Florence which was ordered by Cosimo de' Medici. Fra Angelico was beatified in 1982 by Pope John Paul II and in 1984 Pope John Paul II described the Dominican friar in these words and rather beautiful words he said in lui l'arte diventa periera which means through him art becomes prayer. The second thing to note is that this fresco was part of a large commission of frescoes for the convent of San Marco in Florence and when I mean large it is actually large. It's part of basically 50 frescoes that Fra Angelico executed and the frescoes for the convento di San Marco in Florence were one of Fra Giovanni's or Fra Angelico's most important commissions and it was Cosimo de' Medici who funded most of the refurbishment and we even have sort of a map here that outlines all the cells and all the areas where these frescoes were made for. So as I said over 50 frescoes are gracing the walls there of which this one is one of the main ones. The third noteworthy thing and probably the most interesting one is that it was actually painted and executed for the Dominican convent but actually following the recommendation of the founder of the order Saint Dominic and then also the prize. So it is significant that these frescoes were painted for the now 900 year old Dominican order or order of preachers which of course was founded by a Spanish priest. The Dominican order was made up of clerics or ordained priests who lived monastically and carried out a ministry of preaching. The architectural and decorative programs in San Marco followed Saint Dominic's recommendation so he and him himself. So Saint Dominic prescribed that his followers cells be small, humble and very humble living quarters and the friar's vow of poverty should apply to space as well with barely enough room for a bed and a desk and the humility of the cells was confirmed by yearning for abstraction and transparent geometry by the ostentatious denial of decoration I would say. So these cells were used for sleep, study, meditation and solitary prayer but Saint Dominic early on appreciated the power of art and he and the friar believed that painting played an essential role in supporting the monks in their work and so Fra Angelico and his team gave each friar an image to meditate to complete and perfect their preparation of the spreading of the word and it's even told though that's very hard to prove that the friars were actually rotating round in the cells so that they didn't stay in the same cell for a lifetime that after a few years they would move to another cell exactly to be confronted with another artwork which is quite sort of a beautiful and poignant image. Number four, the fresco depicts the presentation in the temple which is a common motif in Christian iconography. So two rituals were prescribed by the law of Moses after birth of a child. First of all it was a circumcision for male children and secondly the purification of the mother by presenting her child in the temple and making an offering. It has to be said that the two rituals are often aggregated or mixed up in Christian art so theoretically circumcision was to happen eight days after the birth whilst the presentation in the temple was to happen 40 days after the birth. So one could wonder why the Virgin Mary had to go through this purification and it is seen as a symbol of her humility and obedience to the law so it's not just Jesus being actually presented in the temple but this is actually very much about Mary herself. When she went to the temple she offered a couple of turtle doves as you can see here which was the offering of the poor as opposed to a lamb which would have been the offering of the rich. So the nature of the offering outlines also the humility of the Virgin Mary even more and the last thing to note on this is that the presentation of infants in the temple was a festive occasion actually for the Israelites and certainly would have been a very happy moment for Mary and Joseph's life of faith. So as a fifth and final point let's look at the very balanced composition itself which was intended as a support for the meditation of the prior. So the scene is a joyful recognition of the Messiah in the poor child presented in the temple by his parents and it was chosen to inspire the Dominican prior who had contemplated every day in his room or in his cell. So as we can see the scene is featured in a semi-circular apse with a shell-like motif sort of in the conch basically which is a style of antiquity and that would have been seen throughout in contemporary sort of 15th century architecture. So the characters there's Saint Joseph who's portrayed as a mature man bearded wearing yellow ochre garments. He smiles as he offers a basket containing the two turtle doves. Then next to him to his right you've got Mary with her head covered by her bright kaput mortar mantle falling in straight folds to the ground over her tunic and her face follows the sun with an anxious smile and her hands and fingers seem to offer security basically for the baby. Then we got Simeon who is an old man long-haired wearing this green like green and yellow ochre tunic and he's carrying Jesus and gazes on him with premonition and with gratitude. Then of course we've got Christ the child in white swaddling clothes gentle melancholy on his face and I do think that it's a beautiful expression that he has on his face. Then we also see Anna to the right prophetess and she's wearing widow's garments and then last but not least we've got Saint Peter of Verona to the left who's kneeling in prayer in his dark cloak marked with rigid and angled folds and he's basically a Dominican friar martyr saint who died in in 1252. So all figures in the ceremony express this unquestioning faith and yeah I think what's also interesting is that often the presentation in the temple there would be elements already sort of with a pre-sentiment of death there or already depicting omens of what Christ's life would be like in the future or what would happen to him but we don't have this here. This is literally purely a presentation in the temple without sort of further elements of Jesus's future life coming into it. So thank you very much for watching this week's video and on to the next. Thank you.