He was a brilliant colourist whose paintings, mainly devotional works, are as ‘algelic’ as his character and have an extraordinary gentle quality. Late in life he was summoned to Rome by the Pope to decorate a Vatican chapel with scenes from the lives of St Stephen and St Lawrence, where his style, no doubt influenced by his surroundings, became more elaborate, and markedly divorced from other Florentine painting of the time. His picture of St Stephen preaching do not follow the conception of perspective outlined by the influential scholar and architect, Leone Battista Alberti, and there is clearly a dept to Giotto and his school. The richness of the vestments reflects a personal taste shared with several contemporaries, including Fra Filippo Lippi (died 1469), another monk and a member of the Carmelite order. Fra Filippo Lippi was a less saintly character than Fra Angelico, getting into trouble with his Medici patrons when he was convicted of forgery and later, when he had been rehabititated and made chaplain of a convent, running off with a nun, by whom he had a son, the equally famous painter, Filippino Lippi. His work shows an impressive synthesis of contemporary styles, with the influence of Masaccio paramount in the solidity of the figures in his early paintings. Fra Lippi’s work is more human than that of most of his contemporaries. In his famous fresco of the death of St Stephen in Prato cathedral, he included among the figures in the background a number of portraits of contemporaries, including himself. He painted many panel pictures of the Virgin, and succeeded in capturing an expression of serene wistfulness which was to set the style for the numerous Madonnas of the following half century.