Fra Angelico

Guido di Pietro was born in the Mugello valley near Florence and trained as a painter. Around 1420 he joined the Dominican order at Fiesole and took the name Fra Giovanni. He remained both a friar and a working artist all his life, and after his death he came to be called Fra Angelico, the angelic brother. His altarpieces combine the bright gold and colors of earlier painting with the new Renaissance interest in perspective and natural light. In the 1430s and 1440s, when the Medici family paid to rebuild the friary of San Marco in Florence, he and his assistants painted frescoes throughout it, including a simple painting for each friar's cell to aid prayer, and the famous Annunciation at the top of the stairs. Pope Eugene IV and later Pope Nicholas V called him to Rome, where he decorated the pope's private chapel in the Vatican with scenes from the lives of Saints Stephen and Lawrence. He died in Rome in 1455 and was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1982.

Faith: An Italian Dominican friar who painted religious subjects; the Catholic Church calls him Blessed (Beato Angelico). Source: Wikipedia