San Marco
Vacation day four was a day of churches, starting at the San Marco monastery. It is still a monastery--the museum takes up about half the building space, but friars occupy the cloisters. Cosimo de Medici wanted to build a new home for the Dominican monks of Fiesole, so he brought in his favorite architect, Michelozzo, who also created the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. He began work on San Marco in 1436, building on the grounds of a 13th century Sylvestran monastery, of which you can still see a few remnants inside.
The photo at left shows the central Sant'Antonino cloister. Though you can't tell in my dim picture, there are lunette frescoes all around the loggia, one by Fra Angelico, who was a monk here, and most of the rest from the 17th century. Unfortunately, for the most part they're in rough shape, undoubtedly from being exposed to the open air.
More happily, off the cloister is the pilgrim's hospice, now filled with Fra Angelico's painted panels collected from all over Italy. The painting at right is The Naming of John the Baptist, from a predella, a row of small paintings under the main image in an altarpiece. I was surprised to see that one of the other paintings from this predella is now in San Francisco at the Legion of Honor. (By the way, photos aren't allowed inside San Marco, so all these painting shots are from Web sites with images of variable quality. Sorry for the crazy colors.)
Most of Fra Angelico's panels are from the 1430s, and you can see how the gothic is giving way to Renaissance style--less static and icon-like, with more expression and perspective. I have to say, early art often makes me go glaze-eyed, because there are only so many madonnas I can look at. But Fra Angelico's subjects have a serenity and a human kindness that gives them a glow. I also like how, in several of the altarpieces (like the Annalena altarpiece at left), the gold leaf forms intricate patterns that look simultaneously ancient and modern, Byzantine and Klimt-esque.
But there's more! The best reason to visit San Marco is upstairs: as you come up the staircase, you suddenly see Fra Angelico's Annunciation on the wall, right at chest level, I think one of his loveliest images. The photo doesn't do justice to the color and details--the rainbow wings of the angel, the delicate flowers and plants in the garden behind him. It's a quiet image, a wordless pause in a dramatic moment--a case of the painting perfectly suiting its environnment, this contemplative cloister.
And then, behind that painting, there's a U of dormitories for friars and novices, and each of the 43 cells has a fresco painted inside by Fra Angelico and his assistants, for the private study of the monk who lived there. What luxury in poverty! My favorite was in cell one, Noli me tangere, of Christ visiting Mary Magdalene, a gardening tool slung over one shoulder, his feet in an unusual crossed-over stance, as if he's teaching her a dance step.
At the end of the corridor are three rooms once belonging to Savonarola, the fanatical monk who was master here at the end of the 1400s and who was savior or terror to the Florentines, depending upon whom you asked and when. The image at right is by Fra Bartolomeo, like Fra Angelico a monk and an artist here at San Marco, but at the end of the century. This painting is dark and almost Dutch in style (he looks ready to bring the Inquisition, doesn't he?), but Bartolomeo's other works have a lightness and transparency that proved an inspiration to Raphael. But back to the dark side, Savonarola preached against corruption among civic leaders (especially railing against Lorenzo de Medici) and in the church--he even refused a summons to the Vatican when the pope wanted to rein him in. This gained the monk a lot of fans among the people, culminating in February 1497's Bonfire of the Vanities, when Savonarola and his supporters went house to house gathering frilly clothing, mirrors, secular books and artworks, and other "vanities" and made a giant pyre of them. To my horror, I learned that Botticelli became a supporter of Savonarola and threw several of his mythological works into the fire--the following day, a guide told me he may have destroyed as many as 30 of his paintings. When you think of Botticelli's beautiful Venus on the shell, it's horrid to think of one painting lost, let alone so many. Perhaps that's why, besides including Savonarola's cloak, rosary, and hair shirts in these cells, the museum also mounted a painting that shows Savonarola being burned at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498, while the Florentines on the scene seem to hold casual conversations and go about their business. You can almost picture them saying, "Well, thank god that's over. Now do you know where I can get a dress with some nice embroidery?"
Elsewhere in the corridors, you can see cells reserved for the monastery's patron, Cosimo de Medici. There's also the massive library, no longer full of manuscripts but with fine displays showing how vellum and pigments were prepared, and books illuminated and bound, with some gorgeous examples of illuminations.
Back downstairs, there's one last thing not to miss: the Last Supper fresco by Ghirlandaio (the artist who created the Adoration of the Magi in Santa Trinita), in what used to be a refectory and is now the bookshop. It's from about 1480, and you can see how much Renaissance art had built on Fra Angelico--though Christ and disciples are still the focus, the garden is spilling over into the central frame, including that florid peacock at top right and the cat behind Jesus (forget the loaves, where are the fishes?).
There's a lot more to day four, to be continued in subsequent posts.
