Artist. An early Italian Renaissance artist, known to contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Brother John of Fiesole) and Fra Giovanni Angelico (Angelic Brother John), he was born Guido di Pietro at Rupecanina, in the Mugello region of the then Republic of Florence, in present-day Italy. Nothing is known of his childhood or his parents. In October 1417, he joined a religions confraternity at the Santa Maria del Carmine Church in Florence under his birth name. By this time, he was already recognized as a painter. Sometime between 1418 and 1423, he became a Dominican friar in the nearby town of Fiesole, taking the name Fra Giovanni. From 1418 to 1436, he painted a number of frescoes for the Dominican Friary of Cortona and the convent of Fiesole, most of which have since been destroyed. In 1436, he moved into the newly-constructed Friary of San Marco in Florence, where he began painting frescoes throughout the monastery, including the famous "The Transfiguration." In 1439, he painted the Altarpiece for Saint Marco's Church in Florence, one of his most famous works, which depicts the enthroned Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, surrounded by various saints. In 1445, Pope Eugenius IV called him to Rome to paint the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at Saint Peter's Basilica, which was later demolished by Pope Paul III. In 1447, he was in Orvieto, in the Province of Terni, where he painted frescoes in the Chapel of San Brizio in the Orvieto Cathedral. He returned to Rome later that year and designed and painted frescoes for the Niccoline Chapel, Pope Nicholas V's private chapel. Among the frescoes that survived are scenes from the lives of the early martyrs, Sts. Stephen and Lawrence. He returned to Fiesole in 1449 and became the Prior of the convent there. Returning to Rome a few years later, possibly for the purpose of working on the Niccoline Chapel, he died while staying at a Dominican convent. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 3, 1982.