Saint Romuald

Fra Angelico's Saint Romuald, painted around 1438 for the Minneapolis Institute of Art, depicts the founder of the Camaldolese order, a reformed Benedictine congregation. The Camaldolese emphasis on both communal monastic life and solitary hermitage made Romuald a figure of particular interest to the Dominican Fra Angelico. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The Camaldolese founder is rendered in his white habit with Fra Angelico's characteristic serenity and luminous color, the ascetic figure modeled with the soft, devotional naturalism that distinguishes his depictions of monastic saints.