Art by Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar first and a painter second, at least in his own understanding of the work, spending much of his career painting frescoes directly onto the walls of the monks' cells at the convent of San Marco in Florence, images meant purely for private meditation rather than public display. Vasari later claimed he never picked up a brush without praying first and never revised a completed painting, treating the first attempt as somehow already touched by grace. In 1982, Pope John Paul II beatified him, and he's since become the informal patron of Catholic artists, a rare instance of a painter's own devotion becoming as much a part of his legacy as the work itself.