Daniel Campbell

Angelic perspective — in the frescos of Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico (1395–1455), was an early renaissance friar and painter. His work is characterized by the use of the unadorned fresco technique, clear bright pastel colours, careful arrangement of a few significant figures and the skillful use of expression, motion and gesture, of his religious devotion.

Angelico's mastery of linear (normal) perspective¹ and perspectivity² enabled him to subtly alter the point of view from that of a person, to the 'Witness', in divine, not human space.

These frescoes can be viewed in the cloisters and cells of San Marco in Florence, Italy.

¹ The laws of normal perspective were systematized in the 15^th century, by Brunelleschi, and were constructed with great geometric precision.
² Perspectivity: the correspondence between points on two lines in a plane determined by a point of that plane not on either line, has higher-dimensional analogues, or higher-dimensional perspectivities.
Catalog : Fra Angelico catalog raisonné, 1970

Annunciation

Perhaps the most interesting of the frescoes is The Annunciation, not only for its topic, but use of the aforementioned technique, in which the vanishing point of the image is subtly altered.

The Annunciation illustrates the architectural details used to create the space—the interior reproduces that of the cloister in which it is located—figures a peaceful and harmonious sense of 'presence'.

Noli me tangere

One of the first pieces in San Marco. Despite the solidity, the three-dimensionality and naturalism of the figures and the realistic way in which their garments hang or drape around them, it is as if it were clouds these figures stand upon, and not the earth—they do so with no weight.

'Noli me tangere' (touch me not), means not 'don't touch me', but rather, it is not possible to touch me—and portrays Jesus as the risen Christ, one step already in another dimension, and soon to ascend, but, still with some grass to cut, as he is also portrayed as a gardener. The original Koine Greek phrase, Μή μου ἅπτου, can also be understood as 'cease holding on to me', a continuous action, not one done in a single moment.

Also, notice the Vesica Pisces, a classic in sacred geometry.

Transfiguration

Lightning!

Also, less subtle this time, the Vesica Pisces, again.

Lamentation of Christ

Here, purposefully, I suspect, Angelico reverts to a more Byzantine Iconic expression where linear perspective is intentionally not used (look at the coffin), ie. the absence of architectural space, yet quaintly equilateral.