Museo di San Marco: Fra Angelico & Savonarola
Why is it significant?
On the north side of the square, beside the plain facade of the church of San Marco, a modest doorway leads into a convent of quiet cloisters. Climb its stairs and, at the top, an angel kneels before the Virgin under a simple portico, painted so softly that people instinctively lower their voices.
Key Facts
| Place | Museo di San Marco: Fra Angelico & Savonarola |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza San Marco 3, 50121 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77850, 11.25940 |
| Part of Walk | From the Dome to David: Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Michelangelo in Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
On the north side of the square, beside the plain facade of the church of San Marco, a modest doorway leads into a convent of quiet cloisters. Climb its stairs and, at the top, an angel kneels before the Virgin under a simple portico, painted so softly that people instinctively lower their voices.
In 1436 Cosimo de' Medici, the elder, brought Dominican friars here from Fiesole and paid his architect Michelozzo to rebuild the convent. He even kept a cell of his own for retreats. Michelozzo also built a library, a long airy hall of columns, and Cosimo filled it with manuscripts and let scholars use them. It is often called the first public library of modern Europe.
One of the friars was a painter, Fra Angelico. With his assistants he frescoed the cells upstairs, one scene in each, around forty of them: the Annunciation, the Transfiguration, the mocking of Christ with floating hands slapping a blindfolded face. These were not decorations for visitors. They were meant for one friar alone, to pray in front of, every day, for the rest of his life. Fra Angelico was beatified in 1982, and artists consider him their patron.
Half a century later the convent had a very different prior: Girolamo Savonarola. His sermons against luxury and the Medici held Florence spellbound in the 1490s and led to the burning of vanities in Piazza della Signoria. In April 1498 his enemies besieged the convent, the friars fought back, and the great bell they called La Piagnona rang the alarm. Savonarola was arrested, tortured and executed in May. Even the bell was punished: it was carted through the streets, whipped and sent into exile outside the city. Today it hangs in the museum.
His cell is still upstairs, with his portrait painted by Fra Bartolomeo, one of his followers. And on the corner of this square once lay the sculpture garden of Lorenzo the Magnificent, where a gifted boy called Michelangelo learned to carve. Walk south down Via Ricasoli; where the queue begins, you have arrived at the last stop.