Carl Brandon Strehlke: My search for the 15th Century artist Beato Angelico

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1:08This is the deposition altarpiece. You can see it's just been restored. It's glowing. The colours are glowing. This very soft sweet red and blue and gold. Gold. We're looking at an astonishing pinnacled altarpiece by the early Renaissance painter Fra Angelico. full of movement and drama but mysteriously still and intimate at the same time. He had to paint Christ being taken down from the cross where the Virgin is waiting where her companions have already arranged the winding cloth on her lap. And she's in a sense of great, great grief with her hands tightly clasped. Welcome to Florence and the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.

2:03I'm Maria Margaronis, visiting art historian Carl Brandon Strelke, who's on a mission to bring together many of this beloved painter's greatest works, scattered for centuries in a historic once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. Carl and I are old friends. he lives on the top floor of a tall 15th century building, which he calls a medieval skyscraper. Hey, this is what keeps you young, Carl. Well, there's also the fact you might not decide to not go up the gaps.

2:46So, Carl, you've been working on this great project, which I can imagine is a kind of dream project for you. Yeah, it is a dream project. It was unexpected for me. It's the largest exhibition of the artist's work since 1955. And I've been going for the past two years or so to many different museums here in Europe, but also in America. Loans began falling in place. The show is a grand affair across two venues in Florence, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco. But Carl's connection to the artist seems personal. Now, you might not know too much about who Fra Angelico is. If I were Fra Angelico's mother or father, and he was writing with a piece of charcoal on the wall and I needed to reprimand him, I wouldn't say, Angelico, come over here, stop doing that.

3:39I would be calling him Guido or Guidolino or some other nickname for his real name, which was Guido di Pietro. Guido, the son of Pietro. He was born in a little village in the Mugello, which is the countryside north of Florence, probably around 1395 or so. But around 1418, day uncertain, he entered the Dominican order. One of the reasons is probably religious. Another one might be a career choice, we'd say, in 2025. He didn't have to follow guild rules. He could set up his own workshop and he'd have a steady stream of commissions. In 1438, Angelico was commissioned by the Medici's to decorate the walls of the Convent of San Marco, which is where Carl first fell in love with his work.

4:36This cloister where we're sitting is so intimate, with semicircular arches, and then just one story above with these tiny windows, which I assume are the cells? Yeah, that's the dormitory of the friars, and each one of those cells, right next to the window, is a fresco by Fra Angelico. Close your eyes and remember the first time you came here. When did you first come here? Oh, dear. I can't really think because it's just become so much part of me. It may have been 1975 or 1976. Was it this space? Was it this place? How did you come to love and know this work so much? I liked the way Fra Angelico takes these biblical stories, essentially, and personalizes them for the people who are going to be sleeping in those cells and looking at them all the time.

5:36And so I liked the fact that you're coming into a real space. A museum takes things out of context. Here, you're seeing them in their original positions. But not like a big church fresco in which you're seeing with hundreds of other people, but one-on-one, and that's just for you. So here we are, we're going up the stairs to the dormitories. This is not the original staircase, but right here at the top of the stairs, in front of one of Angelico's most famous paintings, which is of the Annunciation. I wish you could see this painting with its delicate colors and quiet forms. The angel Gabriel, rose-robed and rainbow-winged, bends toward the Virgin Mary, who bows her head in response.

6:28If you think of some of the other enunciations, she's seated on a golden cloth as the Queen of Heaven. Here she's on a little stool in a simple bare room. The angel's kneeling towards her And she's placing her arms on her stomach The uterus, essentially, that will bear the Christ job Her face looks so genuinely frightened Frighted, perplexed Not quite sure what's going to happen We'll talk about this beautiful space In which there are all these cells along your corridor That goes down at the far end to a door which would lead you into the church. And during the divine hours, friars would come out of their cells like at 3 a.m.

7:21at night and go down there, sing a few psalms, then come back up. And so you have to imagine them walking through this corridor, sometimes in the murky light, with maybe a little candle in front of this image. And here, this saying written on the building is actually saying that you should bow down to the Virgin as you pass by. It's telling you what you should do. San Marco is now a museum and one of the venues for the exhibition, which is also a project of reconstruction and restoration. a journey as if by time travel into Fra Angelico's own studio too. Around the late 18th century, early 19th century, during the Napoleonic invasions of Italy, they closed the convents, many of the churches, and the altar pieces were moved out.

8:22In this tumult, things got broken up and eventually collected, ended up in many museums. So the great purpose of this is to bring together There are many parts of the altarpieces, sort of Humpty Dumpty style. You have to put them back together. It's a bit of a puzzle. It requires a bit of connoisseurship, but also a study of the technical aspects of these altarpieces. And we've been very, very lucky, in particular with the San Marco altarpiece. And it will be amazing to see it on the wall. Where are we, Carl? We're at the Fortessa de Basso, which is a 16th century fort built by the Medici, but it's also now where Florence's great conservation studios have been housed.

9:12And we'll be going to see some of the research that's being done about the reconstruction of his altarpieces. There he is. That's a problem about coming in February.

9:33We're in a vast room full of artworks propped up at all angles. Huge yellow ducts like octopus tentacles curl down from the ceiling to extract dust and fumes. It's like a factory. It was originally a stable of the army and then it was abandoned and it was refurbished immediately after the great flood of Florence in 1966. 1866. Art historian Cecilia Frosinini has worked here for 30 years. Masterpieces are just sort of standing on trolleys. You never see the paintings like this in a museum. No. We get a very privileged view. When I arrived here the first time and I saw everybody touching the paintings, I said, how can I do it?

10:20In fact, I have a problem now because we get so used to touching all these things. Sometimes in the museum we just go touch them without thinking. And the guard shouts at us. Everyone here seems to be having so much fun, nobody wants to retire. Andrea Santacisara is a restorer of wood panels for Angelico. He painted on wood, not on canvas. And how long have you been here? Dal 1984. He's been working here since 1984. Quindi anch 'io sono old. He's from the old school. OK, andiamo in Falegna Maria. Yeah, now we'll go into the carpenter's shop.

11:02Andrea's showing us a beautifully made wooden structure about a metre square. So he makes these smaller scale models of Renaissance or Gothic altarpieces, you can see them around here, and he is making one which he thinks is similar to Angelico San Marco altarpiece, which we've been working on all together, this whole group of people, myself included, on the reconstruction of its original appearance. So this altarpiece has not been in one piece since? Since probably the 19th century. Did you know where all the pieces were? In this case, we know where all the pieces were. Right now, we're going to have most of them here from museums in Dublin, in Paris, in Munich, in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Altenburg in Germany.

11:55We haven't said, what is the image of? Well, that's a good question. Yes. Because sometimes we're so involved in looking at the back, we forget what's on the front that everyone else would have seen and enjoyed. And the main image is the virgin and child enthroned with saints. And in the predella are scenes of the early Christian martyrs, Saints Cosmas and Damien, because this was commissioned by Cosmas de' Medici for the Church of San Marco. And then on the pilasters, up and down the sides, you can see different saints. These saints could go almost anywhere. and until we had the information of the X-ray graph, we couldn't really tell, so it was just a matter of picking shoes.

12:43We're looking at an X-ray of the altarpiece on a computer screen, which Andrea is using to work out the arrangement of the smaller paintings that were originally along the bottom and the sides of the main image. In this part here, there are holes, which were the ones that had the vertical elements. Ah, that's where the nails were. Now I understand, so you can see on the image where the pieces go. So you think like the carpenter who made it, and you go, I would have put the nails here and here to make it stable. It's almost as if we're in the carpenter's workshop in 1438. You're listening to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service.

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15:07At the far end of the Opificio, a group of women in white coats are gathered round an earlier Fra Angelico from the Church of Santa Croce. Restorer and chemist Anna-Marie Hilling. Here we're working on the Franciscan triptych. It came to the laboratory of the Opificio dei Pietredure in 2021 and Caterina Toso and Marina Ginani were the first restorers in charge of this work of art. The group has expanded because it's a really challenging task. You know that expression, it takes a village? Yes. It's the same thing. Anna-Marie unwraps the central panel of the Madonna and Child. What we're looking at now is very brightly coloured.

15:46There's the Virgin's cloak in blue, which is, is that lapis? Yes, out of lapis lazuli. So what did it look like when it arrived? When it arrived, the colours were completely dimmed. A protective layer had been applied, and this had darkened very much over time and created an almost black layer. La situazione era veramente disperata su questo dipinto. So she's explaining to us that it was actually a sort of a desperate situation. And other restorers in past decades had tried to work on these paintings, and then they just stopped the work because they didn't think they could do it. And actually I think the opportunity of this exhibition created a new focus for working on them, and it was Katerina and her team that were able to decide about a new method of cleaning.

16:34We put on protective glasses and go behind a screen. We're looking at some equipment like something you might see in a dentist's office. It's an erbium laser specially built for the Opifisio. The painting is flat on a table. We're looking at John the Baptist's right foot, which has some dark patina on it. Caterina moves the laser very carefully above the surface, almost as if she's painting. You can really smell the glue because that's essentially where it is being removed. Now it's the washing up of it. She's delicately swabbing away the coating broken up by the laser. Now we can see his big toe.

17:28Let's see, let's see, let's see. Caterina has done all the laser cleaning and she was really, really brave because she undertook this really challenging task of working with something that we had never used here on a frangelico. who is the most delicate painter that exists. His technique is one of the most fragile. She began 40 years ago to study here in the open future.

17:58Caterina says she's worked on splendid things, but Beato Angelico is a step above because his material is light. He is a saint. I feel like you all love the paintings. Yes, a lot. I love Bert Angelico very much, very, very much. When we think about Fra Angelico and look at his works, the most amazing thing about them is their transparency and these light-filled spaces that he's able to create. It's a light which carves the figures out, carves the space out, and almost seems, you might say, to be a spiritual light. And this is, I think, his greatest artistic or stylistic achievement. How does he manage to do that?

18:46Buona domanda. He does it through his way. He builds up color on the white gesso ground. It lends a transparency to the colors themselves. Another point, too, is that Angelico was not a Trecento painter from the 14th century who would necessarily use a gold background. but he was a master at using gold in his paintings. And we think of gold as something that's shiny and bright, but it also gives transparency and form to the colours. And you have to imagine these paintings in front of candles, that they glitter, but they glitter with a combination of both the gold decoration and the colours working together.

19:37Is it just like your stairs? We're going to see one more master restorer, Daniele Rossi, in his private studio. Ciao, Daniele!

19:50This is...

20:00In Daniele's narrow room, I'm suddenly eye to eye with a stunning Madonna, as tall as I am, throned in blue. Daniella wants to know what I feel. When I walked in and I saw all the blue behind the Madonna and her cloak, it gave me a feeling of, at the same time, joy and tranquility. Joy and tranquility. Turns out not all the blue is Fra Angelico's. He made this altarpiece for his own convent, San Domenico, but some 70 years later it was altered to suit changing tastes. This blue and this landscape is the additions made by Lorenzo di Credi. Because it was originally a triptych, they reconfigured it to make it look more Renaissance-like, covered up all the gold background, extended the panel.

20:58You can see the original hood of Beat Angelico and the original hood of Lorenzo di Credi. We've used a technique called infrared reflectography, which allows you to penetrate the paint surface and see what might be underneath. And one of the big discoveries made by Daniele was the original shape of the throne. It had panelling, which was shown in perspective. So even early in his career, Angelico was using the most advanced techniques to create perspective and colour. Yellow is a mineral. Il verde, il green. Maybe malachite elegante is tempera l 'uovo. Egg tempera. And mixed. O solo il rosso, o l 'album per fare delle velature diverse.

21:58So he's explaining a really wonderful delicacy in Angelico's technique. You could mix the yolk and the white of the egg and get a very, very strong color. But sometimes you want to get different effects. So sometimes you might only use the white of the egg and other times the yolk of the egg. The painting is many, many small signs of visionism, of tempera. So you're doing small, little brush strokes one against the other, so you're building up a web of colors. And so the white white, which is the most light, could serve in the final touches of light. so when you only mix the color with the white of the egg you might use it for the final touches of light that you want to put highlights that you want to put at the end and like see this wonderful almost transparent veil that the virgin is has immediately over her very beautiful blonde hair and he wants to show the curls of that hair underneath the veil.

23:16To do that, he needs a very light touch. È un 'ipotesi. This is a hypothesis, but a hypothesis made out of many years of experience of work. Di fatto, la tecnica è eccezionale. Angelico's technique and also Lorenzo Di Credi's technique are just extraordinary. Daniele, when you work on this painting like this, you must have to almost enter into Angelico's mind. I hope.

23:54What we have to do is have a very detailed knowledge of the materials Angelico used. we have this emotional sense that we're working on a great painter's work but it's a work of knowing about the technique. Do you get anxious when you're doing this in case you do something wrong? No, it's the opposite, it's just a relaxation. It's just like somebody embroidering something.

24:33And you keep on going one needle stitch after the other. And it becomes relaxing. It's less relaxing in the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, whose rooms are reconfigured for each exhibition. It's a bit noisy, it's okay. So you see here we are going to have it. One of the big first achievements of Angelico, so the palastrozzi, so the patron was a member of the Strozzi family, so it's great to have him back, in a way, in the patronage of Strozzi. I'm with Arturo Galanzino, director of the Palazzo, who commissioned the exhibition. As you know, Palazzo Strozzi became the most successful exhibition space in Italy, devoted to contemporary and modern art, But of course, in our DNA, there is the Renaissance.

25:29So Angelico is a kind of dream coming true. And I'm sure that the public will be surprised by the modernity of these artists. Angelico is always taught as a master between two worlds, the Gothic time and the early Renaissance. So the Gothic, because he still used this gold leaf, was really a master in this case. but then you see how it creates the volume, how it creates the landscape, the expressions and these incredible colours that are so new, so modern. The leaves drop from the calendar. It's now golden September. Hi Maria, we're just beginning our installation of the exhibition, first day, taking out the pictures from Perugia and it's kind of exciting.

26:20We sometimes have 20 people or so, very skilled workers, pulling cases up from the courtyard. Heavy cases, bringing them in, unwrapping them, this sort of wow moment. But they're very delicate Renaissance works of art and takes a long time. We have the restores. They look very carefully at the paintings. and I'm sort of there like God the Father, so to speak. Though I'm also the puppet because they just tell me what to go around and do. Yes.

27:08Everyone comes with their own crew of people. I mean, you know, the curators, and we have our own crew putting them up, And I think it's something similar to like, you know, if you're putting on a play with a large cast and all the people behind stage and you were just waiting for the audience, hoping they like it.

27:35How do you feel seeing this stuff go up on the wall? Well, it's satisfying, but it's a little nerve wracking, too. Right now it's just about the physical objects, it's not about some mystic relationship with this artist. I just want to get him up on the wall.

28:03And up on the wall they go, room after room of glowing paintings, blue and gold and rose and yellow, graceful Madonnas, angels and devils, saints' lives shown in human detail.

28:20All Florence in its finery seems to be at the opening. The incredible San Marco altarpiece, its fragments reunited, dominates a room. And here's Carl, standing quietly by the Franciscan triptych, still finding new things to think about and love. One of the figures I liked the best before was St. Onoforius. Now I decide I like St. Francis the best. And I think it's just he has such a human face and almost full of pain. It's really hard to understand. Even here, in this grand palazzo, the angelic friars' faces hold their mysterious power, pensive at peace, in grief, in contemplation. You've been listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service with me, Maria Margaronis.

29:12I want to put all the issues on the table that keep me up at night. The interview, the best conversations from across the BBC. We're coming up against technology companies that are richer and more powerful than many nation states. With the people shaping our world. There are those that believe that the power of law should be replaced by the law of power. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.