Saint Dominic's Manners of Praying: Gestures in Fra Angelico's Cell Frescoes at S. Marco

Abstract

This article concerns the meaning of gestures assumed by nonbiblical figures in the cell frescoes by Fra Angelico and his shop in the convent of S. Marco in Florence. These gestures stand in close relation to those assumed by Saint Dominic as both described and illustrated in a treatise on prayer called De modo orandi. The treatise was written to provide Dominican friars with an exact model on which to base their mystical lives. It is argued that Dominican prayer was clearly separable, as regards both means and ends, from Franciscan notions of a friar's search for personal holiness. Such a distinction rests in part on a Dominican psychology of moral and mystical consciousness in which images play a discernible role.