Kugler in Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy shows little sympathy for Angelico 's aims and purposes, or for the intellectual and artistic context within which he was working. Kugler calls Angelico childlike, but implies that his work is childish. He does, however, refer to Angelico as 'noble and amiable' in the 1842 edition, and he makes the entirely valid point that he is best 'understood in these works which are preserved in the situations for which they were designed [i.e. in the monastic buildings of San Marco in Florence], where they still serve their original purposes' ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, p. 92). The point about purpose and cultural context shows the importance of Kugler, and Burckhardt who used Kugler's work, in the development of the historiography of art. The point, though, is not developed, and Kugler's account of Angelico still accepts a conventionally teleological view of Florentine painting.
Angelico 's large figures are 'deficient in correctness of drawing; the artist was still a stranger to the accurate study of living form - a deficiency less observable in his smaller works ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, p. 92).' The point is expanded in the 1855 edition of the Handbook which was revised with Burckhardt: 'These faults are the result of a defective knowledge of the organization of the human body, the lower limbs of which are destitute both of that truth of action and position which Giotto especially had attained' ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, Third Edition (1855, revised by J.Burckhardt), p. 165).
Angelico is categorised as a member of the Sienese School, and that has some validity, but the reference to Sienese influence is superficial, and again ignores issues of purpose and context:
Of Fiesole's [i.e. Angelico's] education as an artist nothing certain is known; some peculiarities in his mode of colouring, particularly the greenish under-tint of the carnation, betray the influence of the Sienese school. ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, p. 92)