Fra Angelico, angelic friar.

As the arts go, music has always been my forte. (See what I did there?) I sang individually and in choirs, played the piano and the flute and the oboe, composed songs, and studied music theory, music history, and music literature to my heart’s content. (I was all set to be a voice major in college until I realized that having a nice voice is not a life plan.)

Art itself? Not so much. Okay, not at all.? I never had the ability to take what I saw, in real life or in my mind’s eye, and re-create it on canvas or in any other medium. In 7th grade art class, we were given a lump of polymer clay and instructed to transform it into a bust. How it was that Mr. Loomis deemed my creation worthy of a place in the display case – it looked like one of those computer-simulated images of Cro-Magnon man – I will never know. Perhaps mine was a cautionary tale of what not to do with Sculpey. I moved away at the end of that year (coincidentally) and never took another art class (also coincidentally). I also never progressed much beyond stick figures, either.?

Curiously, though, when I began homeschooling my children and took responsibility for instruction in art, I had no anxiety about it. Most of my kids had a natural affinity for art, whether free-hand drawing or building complex Lego structures with only their imaginations as a guide. Besides, one of the wonderful truths about education – whether in school or at home – is that you do not have to be an expert in a subject in order to teach it. You need to have some idea of how to instruct a particular child, and you need to know where to look for information on what you are teaching. This is more true in the early grades – I would not recommend a DIY approach to teaching algebra, for instance – and it lends itself beautifully to those early years of discovery, for both the parent and the child.?

For the basic elements of art I found a wonderful book called, logically, How To Teach Art To Children, by Evan-Moor Publishers. In easy-to-teach lessons, using easily-obtainable materials, it covered line, shape, color, value, texture, form, and space. I also used a curriculum called Artistic Pursuits that combined simple art history lessons with hands-on activities. We all enjoyed these lessons.

But the lion’s share of art education in our homeschool happened through looking at actual art prints. I found them in the most unlikely places. For instance, one of our local libraries was discarding a large collection of art magazines that included pictures of famous works. I scooped them up, took them home, and cut them up. Another library had tons of donated coffee-table-type books at its annual book sale, and I brought those home, too. I sorted through all of the reproductions I had accumulated, grouped them by artist and time period, and then found books that helped young people learn what made a particular artist’s work distinctive – such as Richard Muhlberger’s What Makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt? and books on other artists.?

Collecting art prints was as much for me as it was for my children, and through nothing more than looking at countless examples of art from different artists with different styles in different time periods, I developed not only a keen appreciation of classical art but a great love for it.

One of the first books I collected in this way was of the works of Fra Angelico, an Early Renaissance painter from Tuscany, and so I was thrilled to discover that today is his feast day. He was born Guido di Pietro but received the name “Fra Angelico” – “angelic brother” – later in life. What struck me at once about his paintings was 1) his frequent use of gold leaf, 2) the beautiful depictions of scenes from the Bible, and 3) the emotions conveyed in his subjects, something that was a departure from the more somber figures in medieval art. I didn’t learn this from reading a book or taking a class? – I observed it simply by looking at works of art from these periods. So you could say that in a very real way, Fra Angelico taught me, 600 years after he lived, how to appreciate and love art.?

Giorgio Vasari, a Renaissance painter and biographer, wrote of Fra Angelico:

“It is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.”

Blessed Fra Angelico, pray for us.

#fraangelico #saint #renaissance #art?