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Homage to Fra Angelico is a major work in the oeuvre of Mainie Jellett, Exhibited at a solo
exhibition at the Society of Dublin Painters in 1928, the work was warmly received by the
critics of the Irish Times and the Irish Statesman, two publications which had only five years
earlier lambasted Jellett for her abstract and seemingly incomprehensible painting, ‘Deco-
ration’, (1923, National Gallery of Ireland).The work represents a turning point in Jellett’s
reputation and to some extent her practice. In it she moves from an extreme abstraction to
the use of more recognisable figurative elements.
Homage pays tribute to the work of the early Renaissance artist Fra Angelico, whose
paintings, which were reproduced in religious journals, were well known in Ireland. Jellett
schematises the underlying forms and shapes of Fra Angelico’s design of his altarpiece, the
Coronation of the Virgin (c. 1435, Uffizi), editing out unnecessary detail.The curved form
of the composition derives directly from the framing of Fra Angelico’s painting. In addition
Jellett draws on the work’s dominant colours and tones using a similar neutral background
with yellows, blues and reds marking the prominent components in the painting.Through
the language of cubism she transforms a 15th century religious artwork into a modern ex-
pression of spirituality. In doing so she convinced many of her contemporaries in Ireland of
the value and relevance of modern art. As Riann Coulter has discussed Jellett’s choice of the
Virgin as a subject was a way of linking modern art to the sensibilities of the predominantly
Roman Catholic public of Free State Ireland.The theme of the Coronation of the Virgin
is found in Gothic and early Renaissance art and represents Mary being crowned Queen
of Heaven.The story, which is recounted in the bible, was popularised in the 13th century
Golden Legend. For Jellett such a theme evoked a period of widespread devotion in which
the artwork played a central role.
Homage to Fra Angelico relates closely to a work produced by Albert Gleizes, Jellett’s friend
and mentor, who completed a painting with a similar composition in 1927. Gleizes’s work
was intended to be part of a scheme of murals for a church at Serrieres close to where
he had established a commune of artists on the banks of the Rhone. In the end the murals
were never installed. Jellett, who visited Gleizes and who corresponded regularly with him
knew of the project. Both artists began in this period to make explicit reference to religious
themes. According to Gleizes’s biographer, Peter Brooke, the French artist’s version of the
Coronation of the Virgin owed a great deal to Jellett. Homage to Fra Angelico belonged to
the academic Eileen MacCarvill who was a great champion of Jellett’s work after the artist’s
early death in 1944.
Jellett’s work was seen to encapsulate the core values of spirituality and universality which
her particular form of cubism championed and which challenged what the artist saw as the
superficiality of contemporary academic and realist art.
Dr. Róisín Kennedy
