EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “Rethinking Fra Angelico”
Presented by Dr. John Paoletti
with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro, c.1400) has been burdened with the alias of “Angelic” since his own time, a descriptor that has skewed our reading of his quite prolific output in paintings, frescoes and illuminations.  His vocation as a Dominican monk has also obscured the fact that he worked for some of the most powerful patrons of his time in Florence and Rome, all of which should raise questions about the presumed “innocence” of his painting.  I would like to test whether the categories of rhetoric for written arguments during Fra Angelico’s lifetime give us a new way to understand how a presumed simple monk became the chosen artist both for wealthy citizens and elevated churchmen. And how do we, as viewers, fit into the personal, patronal and religious narratives of Fra Angelico’s paintings.

The webinar will include a 45-minute lecture followed by 15-minutes of Q&A.

Please note:

• Your participation is confirmed once you have purchased your ticket. You will receive the Zoom link to join the presentation circa 30 minutes before the start time.
• VIDEO RECORDING of the webinar will be available for unlimited streaming at your convenience for 7 days after the event.

John Paoletti received his Ph.D in art history from Yale University. He taught the history of Italian Renaissance art and of the art of the twentieth century at Wesleyan University from 1972 to 2009, having previously taught at Bryn Mawr College and Dartmouth College. He was a William R. Kenan Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan from 2005 until his retirement. He received the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Wesleyan in 1997 and the Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award from the College Art Association in 2003. He was a Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton in the spring of 2001 and Visiting Professor at the Villa I Tatti, Harvard’s Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, in the late fall of 2008. He is currently serving as a member of the Committee on Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. From 1996-2000 he was the editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, the journal of record in art history in the United States. He served as guest curator for exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Yale Center for British Art, as well as at Wesleyan. He lectured on a number of occasions at the Metropolitan Museum and for the Friends of Florence. He is also a lecturer for Smithsonian tours. His book, Michelangelo’s David: Florentine History and Civic Identity, was published in 2015; it uses the popular culture and civic history of Florence to open new ways of interpreting the David. He is the co-author with Gary Radke of Art in Renaissance Italy, now in its fourth edition. With Roger Crum he is the co-editor of and contributing author to Renaissance Florence: a Social History, (New York, 2006). He has contributed catalogue essays for exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, the National Gallery of Art and the Nürnberg Kunsthalle. He has contributed articles on Italian sculpture and Medici patronage to a number of essay collections and festschriften, and to The Art Bulletin, the Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Artibus et Historiae, Pantheon, and Renaissance Quarterly. He is currently at work on Medici patronage during the fifteenth century and on a monograph on the contemporary German artist Georg Baselitz.