Whether Fra Angelico ever actually had a master, it is impossible to ascertain. There are critics who affirm that if anyone initiated him in art, imbuing him with his own sentiment and style, it might have been the Camaldolese monk Lorenzo Monaco; but Cavalcaselle justly observes that between Angelico and Lorenzo Monaco there only exists that affinity which in coetaneous artists results from community of thought, social conditions, and religious sentiments. Two monks like the Camaldolese and the Dominican might well show the same ideas, without implying a relation of master and scholar between them.[3]
Both critics and historians, however, agree in the assertion that he began his career in art by illuminating codices and choral books. Baldinucci and Rosini judge that his master in painting was the Florentine Gherardo Starnina, whom Lanzi designates as "a painter of life-like style." But Padre Marchese refuting this opinion observes that "not to mention Vasari's silence on the matter, the fact is very doubtful, because Gherardo passed many years in Spain, and returning to his native land died in 1403, when little Guido of Mugello[4] was only 16 years old, an age which scarcely admits of the first steps in Art."[5] But the date of Starnina's death is now corrected and proved to have been in 1408, so, taking into account the character of our artist's works, nothing need now be opposed to the theory that Fra Giovanni may have profited by the teaching of that master, while living in Florence after his return from Spain; besides it is not proved whether that journey to Spain was ever really taken. Historians, it is true, tell us that Starnina, being obliged to leave Florence after the Ciompi riots (1378), took refuge in Spain, where he lived several years; but it is certain that in 1387 his name was inscribed in the Guild of Florentine painters.[6]
Vasari does not doubt that Fra Angelico, like other artists from Masaccio onwards, acquired his skill by studying the frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel;[7] but besides the fact that the style of those pictures is diametrically opposed to Fra Angelico's, the latter could not possibly have been in Masaccio's school, for as he was born in 1387, he was fifteen years older than Masaccio and already a proved master, when the Carmine frescoes were being painted. Fra Angelico's style is so individual and characteristic, that it might rather be considered as springing from his own disposition, developed under the influence of his time. Studying the works left in Florence by his great predecessors, leading a retired life, and purifying every idea, every inspiration in the fire of religion, Angelico was enabled, by meditation, to perfect the models of the best artists of the "trecento", among whom we should opine that the influence of Orcagna in his frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel of S. M. Novella, was greater even than that of Giotto. Indeed it is evident that what Orcagna began, is carried to the highest development in Fra Angelico, who combined softness and refinement with severity of form, grace of expression with nobility of attitude.