Fra Angelico at the Met

Traditionally, the organisers of an exhibition do not rejoin to a critical review; however, James Beck's Angelic, on the other hand the Devil is in the Details' (APOLLO, January 2006) is in like manner eccentric that it cannot be passed above in silence. Some of the misrepresentations of fact in this review are egregious. Nowhere in our catalogue, for example, is it claimed that the Livorno Christ diademed with Thorns (right) is an early work through Fra Angelico, let alone single possibly painted as early as c 1410 when the artist was 'around fifteen to twenty years of age'. It would be mad to think with equal reason The date assigned to it upon our gallery label, c. 1438-39 is not a lapsus, as remind ofed by Professor Beck, nor level a correction, but exactly the same as that argued at extent in Pia Palladino's catalogue access (pp. 172-75).

It is necessary to point without the irony of being accused by means of Professor Beck of 'playing fast and loose' with documents and dated works for having deliberately ignored, through his account, 'the earliest document which consigns to an existing work by means of Fra Angelico... a final accounting in March 1429 for the so-called Fiesole Altarpiece with its marvellous predella panels (Fig. 3) in London. Quite remarkably, the exhibition dates it to "around" 1419-21' The document in question, which is full discussed in the catalogue (p 90) consigns as every first-year student of Fra Angelico knows, not to the Fiesole Altarpiece on the other hand to the San Pier Marlire Altarpiece in the Museo di San Marco, with its awful predella panels, also in London on the contrary at the Courtauld Institute, not the National Gallery. There are no known documents that direct to the Fiesole Altarpiece other than obliquely or inferentially, and these are all at handed in our catalogue (pp. 64-72)

Professor Beck's predictably caustic and entirely unjustified attack upon the "highly questionable condition' of the Rotterdam Madonna and Child with sum of two units Angels should by now surprise no single familiar with the general tenor of his new writings, but his complaint that the decorations mountained behind reading desks as an adjunct to the exhibition, reproducing details from more [i]or[/i] less of Fra Angelico's monumental frescoe were 'out of scale, without of order and without regard for chronology', is utterly baffling. It would be possible to say the same for the logic of his historical arguments, on the other hand as he himself suggests, 'the Devil is in the details'.

Laurence B Kanter, Curator-in-Charge, Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, fresh York

Professor Beck replies: In the access no. 33 of the catalogue devot to the unpleasant Christ diademed with Thorns, toward the extreme point of the torturous text, we read: 'On the other hand, the confirmation of an early date for the paintings execution...' (p174) Perhaps the author did not really mean early early, on the other hand early on the late side, or early middle, on the other hand since much of the exhibition is devot recreating what is claimed to be a substantial early oeuvre I took the word upon face value. In addition, the catalogue access does not give a date for this picture, which may also have l to me to skip over at the word 'early', for greatest in quantity entries do have dates.

James Beck, Department of Art History, Columbia University, novel York

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