Born Guido di Pietro but known to us as Fra Angelico which means the “Angelic friar”. Despite his early talent for painting, at age 12 he entered the Dominican order and spent the rest of his life in convents, painting their walls. Admired by Cosimo de Medici and extremely influential to the early Renaissance artists, he was one of the first to start to incorporate linear perspective.
We also talk about Pope Nicholas V, the first humanist Pope. Born into relative poverty, he spent most of his adult life in Florence as an assistant to an Archbishop and a Pope, while hanging around with the humanists, until his surprise election to the top job. He decided to Make Rome Great Again, by bringing as many of the top scribes, translators, architects, painters and sculptors to work for him as he could ge this hands on – including Fra Angelico and Leon Battista Alberti. He’s also the guy who created the vision for the modern Vatican Palace and the Vatican Library.