Florence pays tribute to one of the great masters of the early Renaissance with a landmark exhibition dedicated to Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455). From 26 September 2025 to 25 January 2026, Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco join forces to present more than 140 works – paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and sculptures – gathered from leading museums and collections worldwide.
This is the first major monographic exhibition on Angelico in Florence in over seventy years. It offers a unique chance to follow the Dominican friar’s artistic path from his Gothic beginnings to his role as one of the founders of Renaissance painting, exploring his dialogue with contemporaries such as Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Ghiberti, Michelozzo, and Luca della Robbia .
The Palazzo Strozzi Experience
The itinerary at Palazzo Strozzi unfolds across eight rooms, both chronological and thematic. Visitors begin with Santa Trinita, where commissions by great Florentine families set the stage for Angelico’s early work in dialogue with Lorenzo Monaco and Gentile da Fabriano.
From here, the journey passes through the “New Language” of painting in early 15th-century Florence, where Angelico merged medieval splendor with Masaccio’s innovations in perspective and light. The San Marco Room presents a highlight of the exhibition: the San Marco Altarpiece, commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici and here exceptionally reassembled with 17 of its 18 surviving parts, dispersed for over three centuries.
Other sections explore the devotional power of painted Crucifixions, the intimate immediacy of holy faces and Madonnas of Humility, and Angelico’s great commissions in Cortona, Perugia, and beyond. Later rooms focus on his Roman years, including works linked to the lost frescoes of the Vatican, and finally the enduring bond with the Medici family, represented by masterpieces like the Armadio degli Argenti and the Bosco ai Frati Altarpiece.
A special feature, Zoom su Angelico, allows visitors to share their own views of the exhibition on a social media wall, blending historical reflection with contemporary engagement.
The Museo di San Marco
The second venue takes visitors into Angelico’s own world. San Marco, the Dominican convent rebuilt by Michelozzo under Cosimo de’ Medici’s patronage, houses the largest collection of his works in situ. Here the exhibition focuses on Angelico’s beginnings with the Pala di Fiesole and his evolution from Gothic refinement to Renaissance clarity.
Highlights include the monumental Tabernacolo dei Linaioli, created with Ghiberti, and the celebrated frescoes that still adorn the convent: the Annunciation, the Crucifixion in the Chapter House, and the intimate cycle of paintings in the monks’ cells. These works, painted for meditation rather than display, allow visitors to experience Angelico’s art in the same spaces for which it was conceived.
The museum also presents Angelico as a master of illumination, with manuscripts and miniatures once part of San Marco’s pioneering Renaissance library.
A Dialogue of Art and Spirituality
The exhibition not only reunites masterpieces long scattered across Europe and America but also restores Angelico’s place in the history of art as a painter who fused devotion and innovation. His figures, luminous with color and grace, embody both theological depth and human emotion.
Walking between Palazzo Strozzi and San Marco, visitors encounter Angelico as he was seen by his contemporaries: a friar-painter whose vision shaped Florence’s Renaissance, and whose legacy still resonates six centuries later.
(photo: Ela Bialkowska OKNOstudio, via Palazzo Strozzi press office)
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Eirini Lavrentiadou is an actress and singer, born in Thessaloniki in 1992. She lives in Florence, where she trained at the city’s Theatre Academy and the Fiesole School of Music. She has performed in classical Greek and European plays, worked with international directors and companies, and appeared in concerts ranging from opera to jazz. She contributes to Florence Daily News as a writer.