Two of many frescoes painted by Fra Angelico (and helpers) in San Marco, where he resided as a Dominican monk. Every cell in the dormitory has a painting of a Bible story or Dominican legend (or curious blend of the two). I counted when I was there this spring, but forget at the moment just how many there are; at least forty or fifty cells in all. It's really a lark to teach in a museum, standing in front of an actual Rembrandt or Zadkine, distractions notwithstanding (and we have had some thrillers--sprinklers turning on, sirens going off, steel barricades crashing down). But better yet is when that art is still in situ, exactly in the spot for which it was created. San Marco, indeed all of Florence, is a teacher's dream.
The second painting is remarkably akin to Surrealist art painted 5 centuries later. It depicts the scourges and humiliations of Christ; so vile were the offenders that religious conventions at the time these paintings were made forbade any representation of them as actual people. Just weird fragments, cadavre parts, all humanity subtracted.
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