Shortly after Angelico took upon himself the full vows of a monk, the whole religious body of Fiesole was removed to Foligno. Here they remained for several years, until the plague broke out and they fled to Cortona, the same town where Angelico had spent several years of his novitiate. By this time he had become a full fledged painter, as is shown by the work he left in two Dominican churches of Cortona. There is reason to believe that when Angelico, an old man, was on his way to Rome to paint for the Pope, he gave, in exchange for the courtesies of the convent of Cortona to a traveller, some pictures of the Madonna which are still to be seen in the church of St. Dominic in Cortona.
The brotherhood was later recalled to Fiesole. Angelico must often have gone down to Florence and there have seen the work of his great contemporaries in art. Massaccio was the artist, above all others, who was attracting attention at this time. His work was the most accurate representation of real things that had yet been made by any artist in Italy. Fra Angelico must have seen his work and profited by it, too.
But he never forgot his early inspiration drawn from the hills and from the morning and evening skies, and so he went back, in spite of any small influence of the new art, to pore over the parchment page and to make the vision of his soul write itself down in fadeless color on golden backgrounds. What he saw of artists' work outside of the convent had one marked influence, however. Our devout painter began to feel trammeled by the narrowness of a margin, indeed of an entire page, and he turned to the ample space furnished by the walls of convent and church.
It was shortly after the return of the brotherhood from Cortona that they were given the church and convent of San Marco in Florence. After long absence they were to return home and their hearts were lifted in song. When the repairs were completed, Cosimo bethought him of the painter-monk of the brotherhood, and asked him to make the house beautiful for his brethren. Whether Cosimo remembered those early days when he had accosted two boys in the vicinity of his castle we do not know, but it seems certain that he knew of the mature artist's work and his reputation throughout Tuscany.
It must have been a great joy to Fra Giovanni to be given this congenial task in which he could glorify God and gratify his own passion for art. Henceforth he left the parchment books to his brother to embellish while he occupied himself on the larger space his soul had long craved.
Lest this work, which he loved so dearly, should be done in a spirit of self-indulgence, he laid certain strictures upon himself in carrying it on. He believed that he had a message direct from God to bear to men through his pictures, so he never undertook one of them without prefacing the work with a season of fasting and prayer, and then, when he began his work, he never changed a stroke lest he prove disobedient to the heavenly vision. Often and often his lips moved in prayer while his hand laid on the colors of the robes or the gold of the background.
While he painted the Crucifixion tears streamed down his cheeks in sympathy with the agony there endured. The pictures of a man who painted in such a spirit are not mere works of art. They are more, for they lay bare to us a human soul, making the thoughts he thought our own, the devoutness and sympathy he felt a part of our own lives.