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This lecture examines the unusual phenomenon of the artist monk or “frate dipintore” in Renaissance Florence, men who lived, on the one hand, an austere and cloistered existence and yet rose to become some of the most successful and highly respected artists of their time. Fra Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico were well-known not only as painters of devotional works for their own orders but also as highly active and successful figures outside their monasteries. How were they able to lead these demanding and no doubt attractive double-lives, and did their religious duties help or hinder their artistic activities? We discuss these questions with reference in particular to works on display in the National Gallery. 

Biography

Siân Walters is an art historian and the director of Art History in Focus. She has been a lecturer at the National Gallery for more than 20 years and taught their first online course, Stories of Art, in September 2020. She also lectures for The Wallace Collection, The Art Fund and many art societies and colleges throughout Europe, and taught at Surrey University for many years. Siân appears regularly on radio and television and has recently been commissioned by the National Gallery to write a book on Still Life in the collection. 

Her specialist areas include 15th and 16th century Italian Art, Spanish Art and Architecture, Dutch and Flemish painting and the relationship between Dance and Art (she is an honorary advisor to the Nonsuch Historical Dance Society). Siân studied at Cambridge University where she was awarded a choral exhibition and a 1st for her dissertation on the paintings of Arnold Schoenberg. She has lived in France and Italy where she worked for the eminent Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon and for the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. She spends much of the year organising and leading specialist art tours abroad, including bespoke trips for The Arts Society.

In recent years Siân has been asked to represent the National Gallery at the International Hay Festival, and was named a Highly Commended finalist in the  World’s Best Guide Awards. In 2018 she was invited to be the guest lecturer on the inaugural BRAVO Cruise of Performing Arts alongside Katherine Jenkins, Julian Lloyd Webber and Ruthie Henshall. In 2020 Siân presented the first online courses for both The Wallace Collection and The National Gallery, and was one of the first accredited lecturers to provide online Zoom lectures.

In 2020 she created a programme of online tours called Cultural Travels from Home, with live visits by special arrangement, broadcast from a number of major European art galleries allowing virtual access to their collections and exhibitions, from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice to the Castello Storzesco in Milan. The programme has included the world’s first ever livestream tours of the Basilica of San Marco and Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, the Medici Palace in Florence, the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, the Brera Art Gallery and Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Palazzo Baldeschi in Perugia, the Palazzo Colonna and Palazzo Farnese (French Embassy) in Rome, the National Gallery of Slovenia and many more. These collaborations continue to raise important funds for the galleries and cultural sites as well as those working in the cultural sector. These are being offered to Arts Society groups as part of their online tours/events programme. 

Image Angelico, Palo di fiesioli Wikimedia Commons