Beato Angelico preacher and painter ...

Dominicans are best known for their preaching from the pulpit , rather than through their art work . To mark the 18th February , the day the Church remembers a famous artist from this Order, Blessed Fra Angelico, Veronica Scarisbrick turns to a fellow Dominican Father Robert Ombres.

Asked to explain the special charism of this Friar, Father Ombres highlights how one of the many mottos of the Dominican Order: ".. is to give to others the fruit of our contemplation and painting ... first to be communicated and then to be precisely the fruit of contemplation.... because vision is one of the elements of contemplation ..traditionally for us heaven will mean the beatific vision.."

Famously Fra Angelico featured angels in his paintings, among the more well known are his depictions of the Annunciation and of the dancing angels, but the question that comes to mind is why he was known as "Angelico ". Father Ombres tells us there are many reasons for his being known as the angelic painter and then as the angelic friar: " ... because of the purity , the holiness of his own life ... the subject matter ..the extraordinary beauty , purity reflected .."


Listen to this interview with Father Robert Ombres, Procurator General of the Dominicans :