SERIES: Travels and stays of artists in Rome
SPEAKER: Carl Strehlke, art historian
DATE: Thursday, November 21, 6 p.m.
In 1955, major exhibitions celebrating the Florentine Renaissance painter Fra Giovanni da Fiesole were held in Rome's Vatican and Florence on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his death in Rome's Minerva Convent. A Dominican friar, he was known by members of his own order since shortly after his death as Blessed Angelicus, just as the theologian Thomas Aquinas was called Doctor Angelicus. In the 1960s the great writer Elsa Morante asked: was Fra Giovanni a revolutionary? After the 1955 exhibition and from Elsa Morante's provocative question we look at the friar's art in a new way. This will be the topic of the conference: how we see Beato Angelico today in relation to the artistic and religious society of his time. And to answer Elsa Morante's question: yes, he was a revolutionary.