On the threshold of the Renaissance stands Fra Angelico (1387-1455), who was trained in the school of miniaturists and influenced by Lorenzo Monaco and Masaccio. His life was devoted to “the service of God, the benefit of the world, and his duty towards his neighbour,” as Vasari says. He regarded painting as one of the duties of the monastic life, and never began to paint without first kneeling in prayer. His pictures are aspirations towards heaven, while the figures with which he peoples his saintly compositions have faces which show peace, joy, hope, and communion with God. They are clothed in draperies of the purest colours, crowned with glories of burnished gold, but are never dramatic in their action. One of his best easel paintings outside Florence, where alone his art can be adequately studied, is his early _Coronation of the Virgin_ (No. 1290). This imposing, if overcrowded, composition is painted to the glory of God and in honour of the Dominican Order, to which the painter belonged. In the right bottom corner we see St. Agnes with her lamb, next to her St. Catherine with her wheel, above is St. Lawrence with his gridiron, and to the latter’s right St. Peter Martyr in Dominican robes and with wounded head. In the foreground kneels St. Mary Magdalene in red, her box of ointment in her left hand. St. Nicholas with the three golden balls at his feet, St. Thomas Aquinas in Dominican robes and holding the theological book from which rays of golden light issue, St. Louis (Louis IX., King of France), and St. Dominic himself—all help to swell the heavenly company. In the predella, or lower part, of this panel picture are depicted _Scenes from the Life of St. Dominic_, the founder of Fra Angelico’s own Order: (_a_) Pope Innocent III. in his vision sees St. Dominic supporting the falling Church; (_b_) the Pope receives, through the agency of St. Peter and St. Paul who hand him a staff and the Gospel, Divine authority to found the Dominican Order; (_c_) the Saint brings back to life a young noble named Napoleon who had been trampled under foot by a horse; (_d_) Christ in the tomb, the Virgin and St. John; (_e_) St. Dominic challenges heretics whose books are consumed in the fire, while his own book of the true Gospel issues forth unhurt by the action of fire; (_f_) angels descend from heaven to feed the starving monastery of St. Sabina at Rome immediately after St. Dominic has asked a blessing; these two blue-clad figures are among the loveliest of all Fra Angelico’s angelic beings, and perhaps the most inspiring figures in the whole of the Louvre collection; (_g_) the death of the Saint at Bologna and the passing of his soul up to heaven in accordance with the vision of the monk at Brescia. This early Cinquecento panel picture, which was formerly in the Church of S. Domenico at Fiesole, near Florence, was painted before the Beato went to beautify the cells of S. Marco with frescoes. It is one of the best of the primitive pictures in the Louvre.