saint dominic's manners of praying: gestures in fra angelico's cell frescoes at s. marco

Saint Dominic's Manners of Praying: Gestures in Fra Angelico's Cell Frescoes at S. MarcoAuthor(s): William HoodSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 195-206Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3050930 .

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Saint Dominic's Manners of Praying: Gestures in Fra Angelico's Cell Frescoes at S. Marco

William Hood

This article concerns the meaning of gestures assumed by nonbiblical figures in the cell frescoes by Fra Angelico and his shop in the convent of S. Marco in Florence. These gestures stand in close relation to those assumed by Saint Dominic as both described and illustrated in a treatise on prayer called De modo orandi. The treatise was written to provide Dominican friars with an exact model on which to base their mystical lives. It is argued that Dominican prayer was clearly separable, as regards both means and ends, from Franciscan notions of a friar's search for personal holiness. Such a distinction rests in part on a Dominican psychology of moral and mystical consciousness in which images play a discernible role.

For Craig Hugh Smyth

Visitors to the Dominican convent of S. Marco in Florence now enjoy the results of Dino Dini's recently completed cleaning and restoration of the frescoes there by Fra An- gelico and his shop.1 Among the most radically transformed scenes is the Presentation in the Temple in Cell 10 (Fig. 1). The overpainted red ground having been removed, the figures stand once again before a Michelozzan niche that worthily parallels the limpid rectitude of the actors' gestures and expressions. The Gospel subject, Luke 22:22- 38, is of course immediately apparent. But the architecture seems no more than emblematically descriptive of a temple; and the introduction of two nonbiblical figures, on the same scale as the four canonical characters farther up in the field, precludes the reading of this composition as a faithful illustration of the text. These two nonbiblical figures are the kneeling Saint Peter Martyr, on the left, and the standing woman on the right, who seems not to be the Prophetess

Anna as one might expect. As she wears black and seems intended to form a pendant to Saint Peter Martyr, she is usually identified as the Blessed Villana de' Bott', a Flor- entine Dominican Tertiary of the fourteenth century whose cult was active when Fra Angelico painted this scene.2

In order to explain the presence of these personages from Dominican history as eyewitnesses of sacred history, any iconographical account of this and similar cell frescoes must extend beyond an investigation of the artist's interpretation of narrative texts. Excepting the Noli Me Tangere in Cell 1, each of the cell frescoes generally attributed to Fra An- gelico in whole or in part - that is, the first ten - contains at least one identifiable person from monastic history as witness to the event from sacred history. And most of the remaining cell frescoes, regardless of their author, likewise contain these figures.

The explanation for their presence seems to lie in the frescoes' purpose. The thesis of this article is that the witnesses to biblical and apocryphal scenes in the S. Marco

This article grew out of a paper I delivered at the 1984 meeting of the

College Art Association of America. I am grateful to Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, who was the respondent and who offered useful criticisms, and to Lucy Freeman Sandler, who made further suggestions. Thanks are due as well to Grover Zinn, who helped me with the transcription and translation of the Ms under discussion and reviewed every step of the inter-

pretation offered in this essay. Giorgio Bonsanti, Director of the Museo di S. Marco for the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici in Flor- ence, generously provided photographs and read a draft of this article, as did Caroline Bynum and Marcia Colish. I am very grateful to the three of them for helping me to improve the present text, despite whatever errors may remain. Finally, I am happy to thank the President and Fellows of Harvard University for the opportunity to pursue Fra Angelico studies during the tenure of a fellowship to Villa I Tatti in 1984-85. The dedication of this article commemorates Craig Smyth's retirement as director of I Tatti, where he continued what he had begun as Director of the Institute of Fine Arts: docere verbo et exemplo, like the friars - particularly Fra Angelico - under discussion here.

1 Not surprisingly, Dino Dini's activity at S. Marco has renewed interest

in the attributions of various scenes or parts of them. Giorgio Bonsanti has seriously challenged John Pope-Hennessy's attribution of the Lam- entation to the eponymous Master of Cell 2, who Bonsanti thinks iS Fra Angelico himself (G. Bonsanti, "Preliminari per l'Angelico restaurato," Arte cristiana, LXXI, fasc. 694 [1983], 25-34; Pope-Hennessy, 206). Bon- santi's argument obviously affects all of Pope-Hennessy's numerous attributions to the Master of Cell 2. Though problems of this sort do not touch on the present theme, one might note the consensus that the Pre- sentation in Cell 10 is wholly autograph, whereas the Sacra Conversazione in Cell 11 is entirely by another hand or hands. Both of these frescoes will concern us below. 2 That the figure of the elderly woman in the Presentation represents Vil- lana de' Botti is indicated by the fact that Fra Angelico painted her dressed exactly the same way in the Lamentation, now in the Museo di S. Marco, painted for the Congregation of Sta. Maria della Croce al Tempio in 1436 (Pope-Hennessy, 199). By contrast, the figure of the Prophetess Anna in the Presentation on the silver chest for SS. Annunziata is dressed in green (Pope-Hennessy, 216-218). In a book pointed out to me by Caroline Bynum, R. Kieckhefer (Unquiet Souls, Chicago, 1984) discusses Blessed Villana.



196 THE ART BULLETIN JUNE 1986 VOLUME LXVIII NUMBER 2

1 Fra Angelico, Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Florence, S. Marco, Cell 10 (photo: Soprinten- denza per i Beni Artistici e Storici)

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frescoes were the starting point for a mnemonic process whereby the friar's meditation helped him to study sacred texts in preparation for preaching. This preparation, in turn, was to be modeled on the way in which the great Dominican preachers Saints Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Martyr prepared themselves for the task. In this sense, it might be said that the cell frescoes constitute a didactic pictorial language. The witnesses' gestures would be the "verbs" of the paintings, telling the beholder how, specifically, to imitate the model. This was possible because each gesture and its purpose are fully described in an illustrated Dominican prayer manual almost certainly writ-

ten for the instruction of novices. Before proceeding to an investigation of what these ges-

tures mean in this special Dominican situation, it seems appropriate to touch on two more general issues that broadly clarify the purpose of the cell paintings at S. Marco. The first has to do with notions of personal holiness per- tinent to the non-monastic religious orders of the late Mid- dle Ages, that is, orders of regular canons and mendicant friars. The second concerns distinguishing between the spir- itualities of two of these orders most active in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, namely the Francis- cans and Dominicans.3

3What follows on the distinction between 12th-century monastic and canonical spirituality, and particularly on the doctrine Docere verbo et exemplo, is indebted to Bynum, 1982, especially the chapters "The Spiri- tuality of the Regular Canons in the Twelfth Century," 22-58, and "Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?," 82-109. In another place Bynum provides a definition for "spirituality" adequate for the sense in which I use it here: "the attitudes and assumptions that underlie the ways

in which people believe in, approach, and worship God" (Bynum, 1976, 195). For references to relevant literature concerning my broad charac- terizations of the early Franciscans and Dominicans, consult J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, Oxford, 1968; C. Esser, Origins of the Franciscan Order, Chicago, 1970; W. A. Hinnebusch, History of the Dominican Order, New York, 1966, 1973.



GESTURES IN FRA ANGELICO'S FRESCOS AT S. MARCO 197

In twelfth-century commentaries on the Rule of Saint Benedict, by which the common life of monks was ordered, and on the so-called Rule of Saint Augustine, which provided the model for organizing priests into communities of regular canons, a clear distinction between the two groups emerges. This distinction rests on the understanding of what constitutes the meaning or aim of cloistered life. Monastic authors tended to stress the identity of the monk as a learner, as one whose goal was the transformation of personal habits and behavior. Conversio morum, usually translated "conversion of life," is in fact one of the vows of the monastic, but not canonical, life. As a result of this commitment the monk sought to become entirely docile to the will of God. He learned this through stability in the monastery where his vows were made and through obedience to the common life of prayer and work, stabilitas and obedientia also being two monastic, not canonical, vows. This docility was then expressed primarily in the worship of God in choir.

By contrast, canonical commentators on the Augustinian rule, while by no means neglecting the fundamental im- portance of personal transformation through learning, placed new emphasis on the mission of the canon to teach. And according to these writers, he was to teach by word and example (docere verbo et exemplo). This new development effected a subtle change in the orientation of cloistered life, so that the fruit of the canon's learning was man- ifested not only in the worship of God but also in the love of his neighbor. Thus, canons were enjoined to learn from each other in a reciprocal exchange of words and examples, and not only from the monastic customs of study (lectio divina) and worship in the choir (opus Dei), neither of which relies, strictly speaking, on such reciprocity. In the thirteenth century Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guz-

man vigorously and even radically expanded this canonical notion of teaching by word and example, with its double emphasis on the continuity between the inner and the outer man and on fraternal charity in community.

The Franciscans and Dominicans, of course, departed not only in this but in numerous ways from the conventional norms of religious life. For the purposes of the present study, however, we need stress only one of these, their commitment to preaching among the laity. It seems rarely pointed out that the preaching missions of the new mendicant orders were, in the beginning at least, very different. Early followers of Francis were not all priests. Indeed, Francis himself did not presume that priestly orders were necessary even for his own vocation, as he never sought ordination himself. The Friars Minor, therefore, were licensed to

preach only repentance or penitence, to call men and women to a life of charity and reform of their moral lives. That is, primitive Franciscans as a rule were not permitted to expound complex points of dogma, whose misconstruc- tion could lead to error. Dominicans, on the other hand, were enjoined specifically to preach against heresy, which is to say, to preach orthodox doctrine. It was thus necessary that they be educated in philosophy and theology, and el- igible for priestly ordination. In these two ways, the Do- minicans were more like regular canons than were the Fran- ciscans. And of course Dominicans followed the canons' Rule of Saint Augustine, whereas Franciscans followed their own.

By as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, to be sure, these distinctions had become less clear, as witness the prominence of Franciscan theologians like Bonaven- ture. The point is that the primacy of penitential preaching and of all the requisite psychological as well as intellectual preparation for its effective exercise became and remained a central feature of the Franciscan ethos, of the Franciscans' sense of their own identity. In the fifteenth century, this was just as true for Observant Franciscans as for Friars Minor, or conventual Franciscans. Similarly, Dominicans, whether Observant or conventual, never lost their commitment to a form of preaching whose orthodoxy was guar- anteed by preparation with the greatest theological rigor. Therefore, although their primary vocations were very similar and indeed almost indistinguishable by Fra Ange- lico's generation, Franciscan and Dominican attitudes towards their vocation and the means they exploited to bring that to fruition did differ. In this regard, it has often been said that the Franciscan preachers emphasized the will and sought to convert the hearts of listeners, while Dominicans stressed the intellect and attempted to persuade their listeners' minds.

To the degree that the visual arts were instruments for carrying out the preaching missions of these two orders, distinctions of function if not of form between "Franciscan" and "Dominican" art should parallel their different attitudes towards catechesis. In other places I have argued that Franciscans used art to awaken feelings of repentance and of identification with the suffering Christ, not just in general but to pointedly Franciscan ends.4 As for the Order of Preachers, the evidence of S. Marco suggests that Domin- icans in their turn used the visual arts to diagram certain kinds of theological relationships, whether mystical, moral, or dogmatic. It seems, moreover, that the Preachers taught each other through painting, verbo et exemplo, and that the S. Marco frescoes need to be understood in relation to

4 C. Bynum, in litteris, has suggested further lines of investigation regarding the differences between Franciscans and Dominicans as concerns the visual arts. These will be traced in my study of Fra Angelico at S. Marco now in preparation. In "The Sacro Monte of Varallo and Popular Religion in the Renaissance" (Monasticism and the Arts, ed. T. Verdon, Syracuse, 1984, 291-311), I argued that the pilgrimage sanctuaries known as "Sacri Monti" functioned primarily as vehicles of Franciscan catechesis, a theme I further developed in an unpublished paper, "Franciscan Pil- grimage Sanctuaries of the Renaissance," Nineteenth International Con-

gress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 1984. On this point see my review of P. Bianconi, et al., II Sacro Monte sopra Varese (Art Bulletin, LXVII, 1985, 333-337). Some of the notions concerning Do- minican spirituality found here I first aired in an unpublished paper, "Re- ligious Identity in Renaissance Italy: Observations on the Function of Im- ages," Conference on Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State Uni- versity of New York at Binghamton, October 1982.




the special character of Dominican life. Thus an analysis of the differing functions of the visual arts in Franciscan and Dominican teaching, whether directed outwards to lay persons or inwards to members of their own orders, may help to sharpen understanding of the uniqueness of each order's spirituality, a task presently occupying students of medieval religion.5 It is in that sense that the S. Marco frescoes may be of greater than art-historical interest.

Bearing in mind these remarks concerning teaching by word and example adapted by thirteenth-century mendicant orders from the twelfth-century regular canons, we can return with focused interest to Fra Angelico's inclusion of those early friars, Dominic, Peter Martyr and Thomas Aquinas, in the cell frescoes. Together they represented the central values that distinguished the Order of Preachers: a holy life dedicated to poverty, preaching, and monastic contemplation (Dominic); the willingness to suffer mar- tyrdom for the sake of orthodoxy (Peter Martyr); and the single-minded dedication to the primacy of study which, especially in the early years, set the Dominicans apart from the Franciscans (Thomas Aquinas).6 The models' gestures, moreover, make it plain that Fra Angelico intended the paintings to be unambiguous reminders of two things. The first is that the friar's moral transformation through the rigorous though prayerful study of Scripture was to follow the process of interior transformation experienced by the Founder; second, this transformation was to result in readiness to preach. This readiness to preach verbo et exemplo was likewise to conform the friar to the inward likeness of the three great early saints of the Dominican order.

Every gesture used by an exemplar in the S. Marco frescoes can be found in an illustrated Dominican prayer manual known as De modo orandi, in use during Fra Angelico's lifetime.' Unlike comparable texts prepared for the laity, such as The Garden of Prayer, De modo orandi was written specifically for the instruction of Dominican religious, almost certainly Dominican novices.8 Composed most probably in Bologna around the middle of the thirteenth century, the treatise is a short handbook - thirteen folios in the Vatican copy - describing nine manners in which Saint Dominic himself is said to have been observed to pray.

Briefly put, these manners or modes of prayer are descrip- tions of Dominic's actions during times of silent prayer, rather than transcriptions of verbal petitions drawn up by the saint for spoken use.

Two general features cast a typically Dominican glow over the treatise as a whole. First is its metahistorical frame- work, the fact that it was not concerned to lead the reader into a vividly imagined recollection of events from Christ's life. By comparison with their Franciscan contemporaries, Dominican spiritual teachers of the thirteenth century - Meister Eckhart, for example - tended not surprisingly towards a rather cerebral or abstract topology of mystical consciousness.9 Ewert Cousins, in fact, has recently argued that the "eyewitness" character of most late medieval pious literature derives from the Franciscan Bonaventure.10 This emotive style of Franciscan mysticism descended to our period by means of the fourteenth-century Meditationes vitae Christi, which is familiar to art historians because its in- terpretive glosses on Gospel texts are sometimes thought to have stimulated painters' approaches to the same pas- sages.11 But for that very reason one could hardly expect a Dominican artist to render biblical scenes according to such a Franciscan genre, as the distinctly undemonstrative movements and restrained expressions of Fra Angelico's figures make plain.

A second Dominican feature of De modo orandi war- rants some mention here, though with trepidation because it concerns a chapter in the history of psychology not yet written, at least to my knowledge. De modo orandi rests on the clearly articulated notion that specific states of mystical consciousness can be stimulated by deliberately as- suming bodily postures.12 Thus, the author describes gestures or actions used by Saint Dominic to provoke nine inner states. For example, humility can be induced with a bow; compunction with prostration; penitence with flagellation; intercession and charismatic inspiration with standing, arms extended; ecstasy with standing, hands joined and held directly overhead; and fervor for preaching with holy conversation (Figs. 2-7).13

The notion that posture or gesture can effect a psychological state seems to have been applied to the moral if not

5 Bynum, 1976, 195-97, discusses this issue. 6 The best treatments of Fra Angelico's Dominican milieu are to be found in I.M. Strunk, Fra Angelico aus dem Dominikanerorden, 1927, and S. Orlandi, Beato Angelico, Florence, 1964.

7 Jean-Claude Schmitt has discussed three versions of De modo orandi illustrated in the Renaissance ("Text and Image in the Middle Ages: The Prayer Gestures of St. Dominic," Conference on Persons in Groups, as in n. 4 above). Schmitt's paper is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming volume of essays selected from the conference.

8 The illustrated Ms copy used for this article is Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Ms lat. Rossianus 3: De modo orandi. It is a 15th-century copy, probably of Spanish origin, containing nine full-color miniatures. There is no edition of the text. For this study I used my own transcription and translation, made with the help of Grover Zinn. A recent English translation, with notes and references, is by Tugwell, 1982b. For the Garden of Prayer in art, see Baxandall, 45-48.

9 See esp. Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Trea-

tises, and Defense, transl. and intro. E. Colledge and B. McGinn, New York, Ramsey, Toronto, 1981, 24-61. 10 E. Cousins, "Bonaventure's Lignum Vitae: Mysticism of the Historical Event," paper delivered at the Eighteenth International Congress on Me- dieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 1983; it was extracted from his essay, "Francis of Assisi: Christian Mysticism at the Crossroads," Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. S. Katz, Oxford, 1983.

11 See the edition by I. Ragusa and R. Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. I. Ragusa, Princeton, 1961. 12 11. .. Anima exerceret membra corporis, ut ipsa devocio feratur in deum, ut anima movens corporis moveatur a corpore" (De modo, 5); ". . . the soul uses the members of the body in order to rise more devotedly to God, so that the soul, as it causes the body to move, is in turn moved by the

body ... ." (Tugwell, 1982b, 94). 13 De modo, 6, 6v, 7, 10, 11, 13. For a list of corresponding gestures and attitudes, see Appendix i.




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mystical life first in twelfth-century Paris by the canon Hugh of St. Victor in his treatise De institutione noviciorum.'4 In Caroline Bynum's words, Hugh's treatise provides "the first theoretical treatment of the meaning to be attached to details of behavior."'5 Hugh's development of this theme entered the mainstream of Dominican thought around the middle of the thirteenth century, in relation to the doctrine docere verbo et exemplo. The vehicle was a treatise on the education of preachers, De eruditione praedicatorum, by Humbert of Romans, who was elected Master General of the Order of Preachers in 1254.16 Although Humbert does not specifically develop a doctrine of gestures in De eruditione praedicatorum, the work is filled with references, both overt and indirect, to the canonical insistence on

14 J. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus . . . series latine, 176: Hugo de St. Victor, Paris, 1854, cols. 925-52. The philosophical underpinnings of this theme are to be found in Hugh's treatise De unione corporis et spiritus, Pat. lat., 177, 285-294.

15 Bynum, 1982, 105. 16 Consult Tugwell's useful translation with notes and introduction.




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teaching by good example, that is, by demonstrating the effects of a holy life.'7 The burden of De modo orandi, which is contemporary with Humbert's treatise, is to hold up Saint Dominic as the primary model for the friar's personal prayer and meditation, which was integrally related, even for Dominican novices, with preparing oneself to become fit for preaching. And here the role of gesture or, more broadly, behavior is paramount, perhaps developed, like Humbert's treatise, from ideas found in Hugh's De institutione noviciorum. For in order to achieve the various states of soul through which Saint Dominic prepared himself to preach, the friar is encouraged to imitate the saint's gestures observed by others as he was praying.

It can be assumed, I think, that friars were trained in this method of prayer during their novice year, the time in which the individual's self-consciousness was shaped according to the group consciousness of the order. It is therefore not surprising that the frescoes in the Novitiate at S. Marco, regularly passed over because of their aesthetic quality, ex- press these very principles of teaching verbo et exemplo even more clearly than do the beautiful histories by Fra Angelico himself.'8

Each of these frescoes shows Saint Dominic and the cru- cified Christ (Fig. 8). They decorate Cells 15-22, that is, the last cell on the right-hand side of the east corridor and all seven cells on the south corridor, called the Novitiate. Mat- ters of formal quality aside, they differ from the balance of the cell frescoes in several ways. First, they are the only frescoes that may not properly be called "scenes," because

they are only minimally related to a biblical event: they show not so much the Crucifixion as the crucifix. Saint Dominic does not, therefore, witness an event so much as respond to an object; and the narrative content, whatever it is, has Saint Dominic and not Christ as the subject. Sec- ond, as a group these frescoes are formally differentiated from most of the others by format and composition. It seems that most of the frescoes in the east corridor, which are generally assumed to have been the first painted and to be the closest to Fra Angelico, may be described as squares surmounted by semicircular lunettes, the whole framed by simple monotone bands modeled to suggest molding.'19 Whether set indoors or out, the scenes are composed of figures placed within ample space. By contrast, the Novitiate frescoes are vertical rectangles, and the figures are put against the flat intonaco ground with only the barest shelf of landscape stretching across the bottom edge. These rectangles are framed by an alternating red and green geometric pattern as flat as the ground and perhaps derived from the repertory of manuscript decoration.

Ironically, this uniformity is one of the two major causes of the unpopularity of these frescoes with critics, the other being the supposed remoteness of the painter's hand from Fra Angelico's. Setting aside judgments regarding aesthetic quality, however, one can immediately see how interesting these compositions are with regard to the theme of this study, the function of gesture in Dominican concepts of personal holiness and of the means by which it is achieved. In fact, the formal contrast of format and composition is so strong that one cannot avoid thinking it was deliberate.

If we look at the Novitiate frescoes for what they seem best to represent, namely pages of books, their subject mat- ter becomes immediately relevant to De modo orandi. For with one exception, each of the seven frescoes shows Saint Dominic in a different gesture, and each corresponds to one of the manners of praying described in the treatise. Cell 16 shows Saint Dominic with his palms together and raised, corresponding to the intercessory gesture of the seventh mode; in Cell 17 his hands are folded in front of his chest as in the fifth mode, meditation; Cell 18 shows the saint with arms crossed in front of the chest in preparation for the profound bow described in the first mode, reverence; Cell 19 refers to recollected reading, the eighth mode; Cell 20 (Fig. 8) shows Dominic bare to the waist and flagellating himself as is described in the third mode; and in the fresco in Cell 21, he holds his arms open from the elbow, just as in the fifth mode. Not all the modes are represented - "holy conversation," the ninth mode, is never shown at S. Marco - and not all the illustrations from the Vatican manuscript cited here correspond precisely with the ges-

17 See, for example, the sections "Learning from Others" (Tugwell, 1982a, 209); on the comparison of the preacher with John the Baptist (p. 225); and on "Why Those Who Have the Grace for It Should Gladly Do It" (pp. 256-257).

18 For a list of the prayer modes found in each cell, see Appendix II. Those scenes which do not contain such figures are: Noli Me Tangere (Cell 1); Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Augustine(?) (Cell 11); Christ in Limbo (Cell 31); Sermon on the Mount (Cell 32); Agony in the Garden

(Cell 34); Communion of the Apostles (Cell 35); and Christ Nailed to the Cross (Cell 36). Thus, of the thirty-two scenes outside the Novitiate, all of whose cells were painted with Saint Dominic adoring the Crucifix, twenty-five contain ancillary figures as witnesses. As will become evident below, the fresco in Cell 11 - not a "story" anyway - may have had a special role.

19 The frames presently surrounding the East Corridor frescoes are res- torations based on fragments found during cleaning.




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8 Follower of Fra Angelico, Saint Dominic Before the Crucifix. Florence, S. Marco, Cell 20 (photo: Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici)

tures shown at S. Marco. However, it is important to re- member that the gestures are accurately described in the text and that the illustrations in each of the three illumi- nated examples still extant differ in some respects from each other. With all that in mind, however, it seems clear that the frescoes in the Novitiate cells at S. Marco were derived directly from De modo orandi, although the, exact model seems to have disappeared.

Thus it was that the novices were constantly reminded that all of their spiritual, moral, and intellectual life had as its end the task of preaching; that preaching was in itself an act of charity growing from a transformed life; that its value lay in the preacher's being able to teach not only by word but also by example; and that the model for this entire process was their founder Saint Dominic, whose own prayer life was illustrated, so to speak, on the various walls of their cells. The cells of the professed friars in the east corridor retained this allusion to De modo orandi, though less overtly. And it is worth mentioning in passing that exemplars for preachers are very rare in the cells on the north corridor, which I suspect was reserved for guests and conversi, or lay brothers, who of course did not preach.

With that in mind, we may turn now to specific examples of these gestures in the historiated scenes closely associated with Fra Angelico and begin with a favorite Dominican theme, the Annunciation. Michael Baxandall has estab- lished that the Virgin Mary in both the North Corridor and Cell 3 Annunciation is shown in an attitude denoting sub- mission (Figs. 9, 10).20 De modo orandi suggests that Saint Peter Martyr's gesture may be interpreted to mean that he, like Saint Dominic in the fifth mode of prayer, is meditating on the text of the Annunciation so that he might be worthy of explaining it (Fig. 11).21 This is an interesting fact, because it indicates that Fra Angelico's painting does not show Saint Peter Martyr watching the dialogue between the Vir- gin Mary and the Angel Gabriel any more than the No- vitiate cells show Saint Dominic watching the Crucifixion. It shows, rather, a preacher preparing himself to preach. The Annunciation scene itself, therefore, not only illus- trates what is in the biblical text but what is in the preacher's imagination as well. One might go so far as to say that most, though not all, of the cell frescoes should be understood as representations of intellectual visions, and not of sacred texts. Even a cursory glance at The Mocking of Christ in Cell 7 makes this clear (Fig. 12).

At the lower right Saint Dominic sits reading, an action that indicates the eighth mode of prayer (Fig. 13).22 Reading or studying is of course as characteristic of Dominican cloistered life as is preaching of its public life. And it is worth noting that the text of the eighth mode states that while reading Dominic "worked sweetly with his mind."23 In Fra Angelico's painting his face and body seem peaceful indeed, even relaxed; here are no Franciscan tears of compunction resulting from meditating on Christ's mocking. The Virgin Mary seated opposite Dominic, although with

20 Baxandall, 51-55. 21 "Stabat aliquando erectus sanctus pater dominicus ante altare cum es- sere in conventu toto corpore directus super pedes suos non appodiatus neque herens alicui rei. Habens aliquando ante pectus suus manus ex-

pansas ad modum libri aperti. Et ita se habebat in modo standi qui ante deum legevet valde reverenter et devote. Et videbatur tunc in oratione meditari eloquia dei et velut sibi ipse narrare" (De modo, 8v); "Sometimes, when he was in a convent, our holy father Dominic would stand upright before the altar, not leaning on anything or supported by anything, but with his whole body standing straight up on his feet. Sometimes he would hold his hands out, open, before his breast, like an open book, and then

he would stand with great reverence and devotion, as if he were reading in the presence of God. Then in his prayer he would appear to be pon- dering the words of God and, as it were, enjoying reciting them to himself" (Tugwell, 1982b, 97). 22 De modo, 11v-12. 23 Tugwell's translation of this passage differs from Zinn's and mine: ". expandebat librum aliquando ante faciem suam inunitum signo crucis et

legebat et afficiebatur mente dulciter" (De modo, 11v); ". . . he would

open some book before him, arming himself first with the sign of he cross, and then he would read. And he would be moved in his mind (as) de-

lightfully (as if he heard the Lord speaking to him)" (Tugwell, 1982b, 101).




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11 Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Ms lat. Rossianus 3: De modo orandi, fol. 9 (Fifth mode: Meditation) (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

a nearly identical gesture, indicates through her facial expression that she, unlike Dominic, is moved by sorrow. Behind the two - neither figure is looking at Christ - is a representation of the Mocking unlike any other version of the scene known to me.

The disembodied hands and head of the tormentors make the image a special type of the Arma Christi or Imago Pie- tatis, which is hardly narrative but iconic. Moreover, Christ is already crowned with thorns, an incident subsequent to the mocking in all Gospel accounts; and he sits enthroned against a cloth of honor, displaying the symbols of his iron- ical kingship. Even this limited array of details gainsays placing the composition neatly among other renditions of the Mocking of Christ. But what is so anomalous as to remove the fresco altogether from the genre of narrative painting is the fact that Christ's robe is white, whereas the

Gospel text specifies that it was red or purple, as it always is in art. (The only exception I know is by Fra Angelico as well.24) In fact, if the fresco can be said to be an illustration of anything, it is not of a biblical narrative but of a late medieval symbolic analysis of various episodes of the Pas- sion. For Fra Angelico's source is not a Gospel text, but a rather abstract meditation prepared for reading aloud in the chapter room or refectory of a Dominican convent like S. Marco. The text in question is Jacopo da Voragine's Golden Legend.25 There we read that Christ was blind- folded, struck, and spat on, all in the house of Annas, and that he was dressed in a white garment in the house of Herod. Clearly the artist intended to present the whole action rather than a single event. Fra Angelico's Mocking of Christ thus compresses a number of narrative episodes into a single and remarkably non-dramatic image.

On considering the Cell 7 fresco as a whole, then, one sees that it, like the Cell 3 Annunciation, represents a mental image, and not an event. For only mental images can conflate historical moments separated by time into one essential idea. Thus Saint Dominic is reading and meditating on Christ's Passion, and particularly on the kingship he won through suffering. In doing so Dominic is put in mind of the Virgin's sorrow, the Virgin who is the model of behavior, according to Dominican tradition, for each individual friar. One might suppose, not unreasonably, that "working sweetly with his mind" over the sacred texts, the

24 The Mocking of Christ on the silver chest for SS. Annunziata was derived from the cell fresco. See Pope-Hennessy, 218. 25 J. da Voragine, Leggenda aurea, II, ed. A. Levasti, Florence, 1925, 447.




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friar in Cell 7 might continue his meditation by praying the so-called Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, the quintes- sential Dominican device whereby the mind of the devotee entered into, as it were, the mind of the Virgin Mary.

Finally, let us return to the Presentation (Fig. 1) and to

another discovery of the restoration campaign at S. Marco. The conservators found that Cell 10, in which the Presen- tation is located, was originally connected with Cell 11 by an arched opening almost as wide as the cells themselves. These are the last two of the twenty cells on the east corridor, the first part of the dormitory to be constructed. This occurred in 1437; the north corridor was built in 1440-41; the south corridor or Novitiate was not completed until 1442.26 In light of this chronology, it seems not only plau- sible but even likely that the lone double cell in the first building campaign was intended for the prior. Indeed, the iconography of the two frescoes underscores the sugges- tion. Cell 11 shows the Virgin and Child flanked by Saint Dominic and a bishop saint, usually called Zenobius, though without much evidence (Fig. 14).27 As each holds an open book exposed to the viewer, it seems more rea- sonable to identify the bishop as Augustine, the supposed author of the rule followed by the Dominicans. Thus, Saint Augustine would hold his Rule and Saint Dominic the Con- stitutions, the legislation whereby the Dominican General Chapters adapted the Rule to changing situations in the order. The Rule of Saint Augustine and the Dominican Constitutions are the two fundamental documents of the Order of Preachers. This fact, together with the observa- tion that the sacra conversazione in Cell 11 is the only such subject in the entire suite of cell frescoes, should alert us, as does the double cell, to a special purpose intended for this space.

The Presentation in the Temple is a theme associated in the Renaissance with the consecration of youth to the re-

26 R. Mor;ay, Saint Antonin. Fondateur du couvent de Saint-Marc, Archeveque de Florence. 1389-1459, Tours and Paris, n.d. (1914), 76, n. 1.

27 Pope-Hennessy, 207.




ligious life.28 It is the feast of February 2, known also as the Purification of the Virgin. This latter title was used by one of the confraternities of youths headquartered at S. Marco. Saint Antonine, particularly during his priorate from 1439 to 1444, had a special interest in the confra- ternity, which it seems was also a fruitful source for re- cruiting new members to the community.29 With these con- siderations in mind, the relation of Angelico's fresco to De modo orandi makes it all but certain that the subject and the prayer gestures assumed by the exemplars in this and each cell fresco were chosen with far greater specificity than one has traditionally assumed.

In the Presentation, Saint Peter Martyr serves as an obvious repoussoir figure formally and also conceptually. He is shown kneeling with his right hand opened and slightly extended; the Blessed Villana stands grasping her veil with one hand while she extends the other like Saint Peter Mar- tyr's. The miniature accompanying the text of the fourth mode shows Saint Dominic both standing and kneeling with a gesture similar to those in Fra Angelico's painting (Fig. 15). The text tells us that repeated standing and kneeling with the hands thus arranged excites the sense of adoration in the friar, and states specifically that Saint Dominic prayed this way on behalf of the friars and novices.30 Ac- cording to my interpretation of the new archaeological evidence at S. Marco, the prior was the special viewer Fra Angelico had in mind for the Presentation; the gestures thus enjoin him to pray for his brothers, along with Saint Peter Martyr and the Blessed Villana, while meditating on the text of the Presentation in the Temple.

Depictions of persons recently dead or even still alive occur so frequently in Renaissance paintings of sacred history that it is easy to forget that this creative anachronism was not always in vogue. The interpretation of Fra An- gelico's use of exemplars at S. Marco offered here does seem to support the increasing development of the "visionary" genre in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art. The comparison of the exemplars' gestures with those of Saint Dom- inic in De modo orandi makes it clear, I think, that Fra Angelico intended that the viewer perceive the cell frescoes through eyes fully educated in Dominican traditions of

prayer. Entrance into these traditions was gained through the Novitiate. Although novices did not preach in public - in the sense of preaching as sermon-giving - they certainly learned through Humbert of Romans' De eruditione

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15 Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Ms lat. Rossianus 3: De modo orandi, fol. 8 (Fourth mode: Compassion/Intercession) (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

praedicatorum that verbal discourse is only one expression of the preacher's vocation to teach by word and example. Other manifestations of a life modeled on the founder Saint Dominic, a life transformed through prayer, study, and obedience, were also legitimate forms of preaching.

Among the Dominicans, there was no separation between the inner and the outer man, between contemplation and action, between silence and speech. The call to preach, grounded in prayerful study or studious prayer, could be answered in every moment of the friar's life, so long as he was determined docere verbo et exemplo. In that sense, Fra Angelico was a preacher in paint, rather than in words.31 Continuing investigation of the S. Marco frescoes will re- veal other aspects - or parts of speech - in Fra Angelico's idiom as a preacher in paint. Reaching not only the community of his Dominican brethren but the community of his fellow painters, these other parts of speech were equally fruitful contributions to the representational experiments invigorating European art in this period.32

Previous publications by William Hood have addressed problems of Venetian Renaissance and Roman seventeenth- century art, typically with a focus on the function of religious images. He now is preparing a book-length study entitled Fra Angelico at San Marco. [Department of Art, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074]

28 The themes of the Presentation of Christ or the Purification of the Vir-

gin, and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple were widely associated, for obvious reasons, with religious dedication. For this theme in a later context, see my article "The Narrative Mode in Titian's Presen- tation of the Virgin," Studies in Italian Art History, i, Rome, 1980, 125- 152, esp. 127-128. 29 Moriay, 473ff.

30 "Et fiebat in sancto patre dominico grandis fiducia de misericordia dei

pro se . . . et pro conservacione noviciorum fratrum" (De modo, 7v); "And a great confidence would grow in our holy father Dominic, confidence in God's mercy for himself . . and for the protection of the nov-

ices ... ." (Tugwell, 1982b, 96). 31 Fra Angelico as a preacher is the subject of a suggestive essay by Eugenio Marino, O.P., "Beato Angelico. Umanesimo e teologia," Beato Angelico. Miscellanea di studi, ed. Postulazione Generale dei Domenicani, Rome, 1984, 465-533, esp. 481-486. 32 Since this article went to press, two important additions to the bibli-

ography have appeared. The first is Simon Tugwell's edition of De modo orandi in Medieval Studies, xLvII, 1985; second is the paper by Jean-Claude Schmitt, "Entre le Texte et l'image: Les Gestes de la priere de Saint Dom-

inique," Persons in Groups, ed. R. Trexler, Binghamton, NY, 1985, 195- 220.




Appendix I 15 None Dominic at Foot of Cross (Novitiate

Modes, Attitudes, and Gestures Cells 15-22 all have

Mode Attitude Gesture this subject)

16 Seven One Reverence Deep bow from waist

17 Five Two Humility Prostration

Three Penitence Flagellation 18 One

Four Compassion Repeated genuflexion 19 Eight

(Intercession) 19 Eight

Five Meditation Standing upright, 20 Three hands before chest

21 Five Six Imploring divine Standing, arms 22 None Crucifixion

power outstretched 231 Five? Crucifixion Virgin Mary,

Seven Ecstasy Standing, arms held Dominic directly overhead

Eight Recollection Reading 24 Four? Baptism Virgin Mary, Thomas

Nine Enthusiasm for Conversation preaching

25 Five Crucifix Dominic

26 Four? Man of Sorrows Virgin Mary

Appendix II Thomas Distribution of Prayer Modes in the Cell Frescoes 27 Three Christ at Column Virgin Mary,

Dominic

Cell Mode Subject Exemplum 28 Four? Christ with Cross Dominic

1 None Noli Me Tangere None 29 Five? Crucifixion Virgin Mary, Peter Martyr 2 Four Lamentation Dominic

30 Five? Crucifixion Dominic 3 Five Annunciation Peter Martyr

30 Five?

4 Five Crucifixion Dominic 31 None Christ in Limbo None

32 None Sermon on Mount None 5 Four Nativity Peter Martyr

32 None

32a None Temptation None 6 Five Transfiguration Virgin Mary 32a None Temptation

Dominic 33 None Arrest None

7 Eight Mocking Dominic 33a None Entry into None

8 Four Maries at Tomb Dominic Jerusalem

34 None Agony None 9 Four Coronation Dominic et

al. 35 None Communion None

10 Four Presentation Peter Martyr, 36 None Nailing to Cross None Bl. Villana 37 Six Crucifix Dominic

11 None Sacra Conversazione Four Thomas

12 No Decoration 38-39 Cells of Cosimo

by Fra Angelico de' Medici

Shop 40 Two Crucifix Dominic

13 No Decoration 41 Five Crucifix Dominic by Fra Angelico Shop 42 Five Crucifix Dominic

14 No Decoration 43 Five? Crucifix Dominic

by Fra Angelico 44 Seven? (Fragment) Dominic Shop

1 The gestural ambiguities in Cells 23-30, none of which was painted by Fra Angelico, are signified by a question mark (7).




Bibliography Baxandall, M., Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, Ox- ford, 1972.

Bynum, C., 1976, "Franciscan Spirituality: Two Approaches," Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 7, 195-97.

, 1982, Jesus as Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London.

De modo orandi: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms lat. Rossianus 3.

Pope-Hennessy, J., Fra Angelico, 2nd ed., London, 1974.

Tugwell, S., transl. and ed., 1982a "Humbert of Romans' Treatise on the Formation of Preachers," Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, New York, Ramsey and Toronto, 179-370, 447-448.

Tugwell, S., transl., 1982b, "The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic," Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, New York, Ramsey and Toronto, 94-103, 475-76.



saint dominic's manners of praying: gestures in fra angelico's cell frescoes at s. marco

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