Saint Thomas Aquinas

Fra Angelico's Saint Thomas Aquinas, painted around 1442 for the Museum of San Marco, depicts the greatest intellectual of the Dominican Order. Thomas Aquinas's systematic theology was the foundation of Dominican teaching, and his image held a place of honor in Dominican churches and monasteries throughout Europe. 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 Dominican doctor is rendered in his black and white habit with the attributes of learning, painted in Fra Angelico's luminous style with the serene expression and monumental simplicity that characterize his depictions of Dominican saints.