enacted by children solemnly playing at martyr and executioner; and he
nearly spoils one of the most impressive scenes ever painted--the great
"Crucifixion" at San Marco--with the childish violence of St. Jerome's
tears. But upon the picturing of blitheness, of ecstatic confidence in
God's loving care, he lavished all the resources of his art. Nor were
they small. To a power of rendering tactile values, to a sense for the
significant in composition, inferior, it is true, to Giotto's, but
superior to the qualifications of any intervening painter, Fra Angelico
added the charm of great facial beauty, the interest of vivid
expression, the attraction of delicate colour. What in the whole world
of art more rejuvenating than Angelico's "Coronation" (in the
Uffizi)--the happiness on all the faces, the flower-like grace of line
and colour, the childlike simplicity yet unqualifiable beauty of the
composition? And all this in tactile values which compel us to grant the
reality of the scene, although in a world where real people are
standing, sitting, and kneeling we know not, and care not, on what. It
is true, the significance of the event represented is scarcely touched
upon, but then how well Angelico communicates the feeling with which it
inspired him! Yet simple though he was as a person, simple and
one-sided as was his message, as a product he was singularly complex. He
was the typical painter of the transition from Mediæval to Renaissance.
The sources of his feeling are in the Middle Ages, but he _enjoys_ his
feelings in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his
means of expression. We are too apt to forget this transitional
character of his, and, ranking him with the moderns, we count against
him every awkwardness of action, and every lack of articulation in his
figures. Yet both in action and in articulation he made great progress
upon his precursors--so great that, but for Masaccio, who completely
surpassed him, we should value him as an innovator. Moreover, he was not
only the first Italian to paint a landscape that can be identified (a