For many generations, elite opinion has held that faith and science are opposed. The same has also been argued for art and science. Science, generally speaking, concerns itself with measurable and reproducible qualities in nature, often with the goal of using them to produce new technologies. Faith and art, however, are concerned with emotions, values, and meaning, including concepts that are too abstract to be measured (like justice, goodness, and beauty).
Today, however, we increasingly recognize the limits of worldviews that exclude the supernatural. We see that science pursued without reference to meaning opens the door to suffering, waste, and abuse. We are also learning to appreciate the traditional, faith-based lifeways that have survived in our midst. Suddenly, faith and science—and relatedly, art and science—don't feel like eternal enemies. We begin look for new (and sometimes old!) examples of how to build a healthy culture and society.
I think the lives and works of some of the great Christian artists can show us a way forward. Many of these artists retained a keen sense of the supernatural while embracing the latest scientific advances. Their lives showed that deep faith, passionate artfulness, and scientific acumen can beautifully coexist. And their legacy can continue today!
One of these artists is the elusive Renaissance painter Giovanni da Fiesole, better known as Fra Angelico. Right now, his work is enjoying major critical attention thanks to a blockbuster exhibition in Florence—the first of its kind in more than 70 years. This exhibition is helping scholars reassess the complex, captivating, and innovative quality of Fra Angelico’s art.
For many centuries, Fra Angelico (literally, “the angelic brother”), a saintly and humble Dominican monk, was appreciated primarily as a religious painter. His emotionally powerful, ethereal paintings were praised for their spiritual intensity, and indeed they remain popular devotional objects among those who enjoy religious art. For hundreds of years, Angelico’s images of Mary and the baby Jesus have been reproduced and treasured in settings of private prayer. And in fact, most of the artist’s works were made for the private use of Dominican monks, such as the San Marco altarpiece, below.
However, the Dominican order, shaped by the work of the philosopher (and Dominican) Thomas Aquinas, was renowned for its intellectualism. And in the realm of art, Fra Angelico was among the leaders of his age in applying mathematical rules to the rendering of space. In an age when architects and mathematicians were learning how to convincingly model three-dimensional spaces on a flat plane, Fra Angelico stood out for his compelling and lucid approach. He was also ahead of his time in his understanding of light and color, producing works of amazing luminosity and sophisticated chromatic brilliance. Finally, he was groundbreaking for his careful attention to the details of botany and geology.
One very famous, and deceptively simple, fresco by Fra Angelico shows the angel Gabriel informing Mary of her miraculous pregnancy. Gracing the hallway of a Dominican monastery, this image opened a window-like hole in the monastery wall, creating an enchanting illusion of holy space. For one of the first times in art history, perspective lines plunge toward a vanishing point, creating convincing depth. Pristine geometric shapes, like the cylindrical columns and perfectly semicircular arches, create a sense of elegant, rational harmony. And the expertly calibrated colors, especially in the angel’s wings, create just the right amount of contrast, imparting drama in a serene and dignified way.
Among professional, secular artists of Fra Angelico’s time, there was great competition to discover scientific formulas of space and color that would create convincing illusions and shine with rational clarity. Humbly and quietly, Fra Angelico surpassed many of his more ambitious, secular contemporaries. Furthermore, he reserved his most innovative solutions for consecrated spaces not generally open to the public. Fra Angelico pursued truth and beauty for its own sake, all to the glory of God.
Fra Angelico was considered a great mystic who prayerfully sought divine guidance while painting. In fact, it is said that he didn’t make changes or corrections to his works! He didn’t want to compromise the witness of the “inspired” moment from which his art organically flowed. However, as the above illustrations show, Fra Angelico’s paintings are nothing like the wild explosions of religious emotion one might expect from such a mystical process. Instead, they are obviously products of a keen scientific intelligence.
Today, it is common to attribute scientific and mathematical breakthroughs to moments of “inspiration” when everything seems to “come together.” The work of Fra Angelico shows that inspiration—a “coming together” of harmonic connections—is exquisitely, divinely multivalent. True inspiration doesn’t involve merely “scientific” observations about the world. Instead, it can embrace scientific, aesthetic, and spiritual truth all at once in statements of enduring, enchanting beauty.