San Marco, Florence

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San Marco is the name of religious complex in Florence, Italy. It comprises a church and a convent. The convent, which is now a museum, has three claims to fame: during the 15th century it was home to two famous Dominicans, the painter Fra Angelico and the preacher, Girolamo Savonarola. Also housed at the convent is a famous collection of manuscripts in a library built by Michelozzo.

The present convent occupies the site where a Vallombrosan monastery existed in the 12th century, which later passed to Benedictine monks of the Silvestrine line. In 1435 the Benedictines were replaced by Dominicans from Fiesole. Two years later, they appealed to Cosimo de' Medici the Elder, who lived nearby in the family palace, now known as the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, to fund the renovation of the entire complex. The works were entrusted to Michelozzo. Each cell of the monks cloister and many other walls were decorated by Fra Angelico in collaboration with others, including Benozzo Gozzoli. Cosimo de' Medici had a cell at the convent for his personal retreat.

San Marco is famous as the seat of Girolamo Savonarola's discourses during his short spiritual rule in Florence in the late 15th century.

Contents 1 Church 2 Convent 3 Fra Angelico at San Marco 4 Iconography and Devotion in the Art 5 Devotion: Principles And Convictions of the Dominican Order 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Church

The church was consecrated in 1443, in the presence of Pope Eugene IV. It has a single nave with side chapels designed in the late 16th century by Giambologna, and housing paintings from the 16th–17th centuries. In the late 17th century the tribune and the carved ceiling were also realized. A further renovation was carried on in 1678 by Pier Francesco Silvani. The façade, in Neo-Classical style, was built in 1777–1778.

Among the artworks, the most ancient is a 14th century crucifix in the counter-façade. The crucifix on the high altar is by Angelico (1425-1428). In the first altar to the right is St. Thomas Praying by Santi di Tito from 1593, while on the second altar is a Madonna with Saints by Fra Bartolomeo.

Giambologna completed the Cappella di Sant'Antonino (also known as Salviati Chapel) in May 1589. The Salviati family had been linked by marriage to the Medici (Pope Leo XI was the son of Francesca Salviati, the daughter of Giacomo Salviati and Lucrezia de' Medici. The interior was decorated in fresco with a Translation and Funeral of St. Antonino Perozzi by Domenico Passignano. The dome of the chapel is by Bernardino Poccetti, also author of frescoes in the Sacrament Chapel. The latter also has canvases by Santi di Tito, Crespi, Francesco Morandini, Jacopo da Empoli, and Francesco Curradi.

Significant figures buried in San Marco include Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the poet Angelo Poliziano.

[edit] Convent

Michelozzo built for Cosimo de' Medici a sober, though comfortable, Renaissance edifice, including the elegant cloister and, above all, the Library, which, under the reign of Lorenzo il Magnifico became one of the favourite meeting points for Florentine humanists such as Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, who could conveniently consult here texts in Latin and Greek language.

The convent was stripped from the Dominicans in 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars, and again in 1866, when it became a possession of the state.

The convent is now home to the Museo Nazionale di San Marco. The entrance to the museum is from the so-called Cloister of St. Antoninus, frescoed by Bernardino Poccetti in the 16th-17th century.

The museum houses the major collection of works by Fra Angelico. Panel paintings included the Deposition executed for Palla Strozzi, the Altarpiece of San Marco commissioned by the Medici in 1440, and a tabernacle (1433-1434) executed in collaboration with Lorenzo Ghiberti. There are also a great number of small frescoes by Angelico and his assistants in the monastic cells and a number of larger frescoes including the much-reproduced Annunciation. His masterwork is the complex Crucifixion in the Capitular Hall, finished in 1442.

Main article: Fra Angelico

The museum exhibits works by other artists including Domenico Ghirlandaio, a reduced scale version of the Last Supper in the church of Ognissanti; Alesso Baldovinetti, Giovanni Antonio Sogliani and Fra Bartolomeo. The cells where Girolamo Savonarola lived can also be visited.

[edit] Fra Angelico at San Marco

The San Marco monastery and Fra Angelico

The San Marco monastery in Florence, Italy housed devotional art that aided in Dominican prayer and meditation. The building was originally a Sylvestrine monastery that was then taken over and expanded in 1438 by Cosimo de’Medici. He commissioned Fra Angelico, a devout Dominican friar and innovative Florentine painter, to adorn the monastery. With the help of his fellow Dominican assistants, he painted forty-three frescoes that acted as a spiritual guide to life in their community. These men were more inspired disciples than titled artists, yet created a sanctuary with great artistry, skillful composition and jewel-tone colors that formed peacefulness and shed an incredible luminescence. ^[1][2][3]

Inspiration from the architecture

The new spaciousness of the building, planned and sculpted by Michelozzo di Bortolommeo allowed Fra Angelico’s paintings to portray the sacredness of Christ. The building has two floors; the first was open to the public, and the second was secluded for monastic vows, so most of the artwork was done solely for the study of the monks. The artwork depicted scenes from the New Testament with additional Dominican saints and reformers for examination and exposure to reinforce the strong order. ^[4][5][6] Fra Angelico painted frescoes in the cloisters and every room, surrounding even the sacrisity, chapter room and library. Each inhabitant had his own room for prayer and meditation with his own fresco. Dominicans were the first and only to use images to this extent for these purposes. A hall of seven adjacent cells was for the novices; these were the most uniform, all with white ground and a depiction of St. Dominic worshipping the cross. The only difference was in the Saint’s gestures, which were changed based on different theological texts. In another hall there were twenty frescoes painted for the clerics. These were more interesting, possibly more distracting, paintings of Christ or Mary with historical references and various saints. Two were specifically for Cosimo de’Medici’s separated quarter, which also served as the special guest room. Medici and his family played a predominant and pious role in these two. Aside from the categorical, was the altarpiece; Fra Angelico created the first high altar of the renaissance at San Marco to invoke a sense of cult and reverence. ^{[7][8][9][10]}

The big picture

As the high altar continues tradition, the other pieces are innovative, acting as both mirrors and windows to students and educators alike. Fra Angelico transformed San Marco monastery to have a sense of devotion through art by projecting new ideas of artistic naturalism at a monumental scale. ^[11][12]

[edit] Iconography and Devotion in the Art

The San Marco Altarpiece

In the San Marco Altarpiece, Angelico painted the scene of the Virgin Mary and Christ centered amongst different Saints.^[13] Two Saints create a perspective through their gazes.^[14] On the right, Saint Dominic looks to Angelico’s Heaven towards the painting’s vanishing point drawing the viewer into the divine scene. Cosmos, on the left, holds a mirror-like gaze separating the painting and the viewer. Through the lines of perspective from Saint Dominic, the viewer is drawn into the heavenly scene, while Cosmos establishes the separation of the viewer and the Divine.

Angelico mirrored the architecture of each particular cell within the painting. In doing this, he made the holy painting part of the cell, allowing the ideal depiction of the Divine to be as close as possible to the Dominican Order. Within the painting, Angelico makes reference to practices of the Dominican Mass.^[15]Like the sub deacon and deacon who knelt while helping the Dominican priest during Mass, the Saints kneel in the altarpiece. The same way the priest stands in the center of the altar during Mass to reenact the sacrifice of Christ; a centered etching of the crucified Christ leads the viewer’s eyes to Mary holding Jesus. The saints who surround the Virgin and child may represent the Dominican Congregation.

Scholars think that Angelico delved even deeper to incorporate the art and devotion of the San Marco Monastery through certain choices he made within the composition of the renowned Altarpiece. To create the mirror effect, he focused on the surface of the work by painting fictitious curtains in the upper corners of the altarpiece.^[16] He created the mirror of the real world within the painting but also allowed the viewer a window into the Heavenly ideal. Through glaze, pax, and rich colors, particularly reds and greens, Angelico was able to portray God's Indescribable majesty. Thus, faith was tangible but still a higher power to attain.

Saint Dominic Before the Crucifix

Most of the cells’ frescoes contain at least one identifiable person from monastic history, either Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, or Peter Martyr. Together they represent the central values that distinguished the Dominicans. Saint Dominic stood for a holy life dedicated to poverty, preaching, and monastic contemplation; Saint Thomas Aquinas represented the single-minded dedication to the primacy of study; Peter Martyr stood for the willingness to suffer martyrdom for the sake of orthodoxy. The gestures of the models indicate that Fra Angelico intended the paintings to remind the friars to transform morally through the rigorous though prayerful study of Scripture was to follow the process of interior transformation experienced by the Founder. This transformation was to result, therefore, in the readiness to preach.^[17]

In Saint Dominic Before the Crucifix, Angelico presented a more naturalistic image of Jesus, a higher power closer to the image of the worldly man.^[18] While this piece is the largest fresco in the cloister on the first floor, it is simple much like the lives of the devout Dominican monks. The priest is shown in profile with little emotion in austere garb, but his rich relationship to Christ is explicitly clear through his devout gesture and posture.^[19]

The Saints’ presence in the biblical and apocryphal scenes in the San Marco frescoes were the starting point for a mnemonic process whereby the friar’s meditation helped him to study sacred texts in preparation for preaching. The Dominican Saints’ gestures in the frescoes constituted a didactic pictorial language in which they would be the “verbs” of the paintings, telling the viewer how to imitate the model.^[20] This was made possible by a fully illustrated Dominican prayer manual, entitled De modo orandi, which linked the purpose of each gesture to a specific Dominican manner or mode of prayer.^[21]

The De modo orandi rested on the belief that specific states of mystical consciousness can be stimulated by deliberately assuming bodily postures. In order to achieve the various states of spirit through which Saint Dominic prepared himself to preach, the friar was encouraged to imitate the saint’s gestures as he was praying. The artist thus depicted gestures or actions used by Saint Dominic to provoke nine inner states:^[22]

Attitude	Gesture
1) Reverence	Deep bow from waist
2) Humility	Prostration
3) Penitence	Flagellation
4) Compassion	Repeated genuflexion
5) Meditation	Standing upright, hands before chest
6) Imploring divine	Standing, arms outstretched
7) Ecstasy	Standing, arms held directly overhead
8) Recollection	Reading
9) Enthusiasm for preaching	Conversation

2) Humility - Prostration	3) Penitence - Flagellation	4) Compassion - Repeated genuflexion	6) Imploring divine - Arms outstretched
8) Recollection - Reading

A common typology of Fra Angelico’s frescoes within the novices’ cells depicted Saint Dominic before the Crucifix (cells 15-22). In these frescoes, Saint Dominic is the main subject matter rather than Christ. These frescoes are only tangentially connected with a biblical event because they do not show the Crucifixion but the Crucifix, therefore, Saint Dominic does not witness an action so much as respond to an object. Whatever narrative content there may be must have Saint Dominic and not Christ as the agent. This emphasizes Fra Angelico’s association of this major image with those cell frescoes intended to strengthen the formation of young men in Dominican consciousness through private meditation. This strict conformity from cell to cell suggests that Fra Angelico decided that variety would have to come in details and not in broader matters of composition and pose. In Saint Dominic Before the Crucifix (Cell 20), Dominic is bare to the waist and flagellating himself as described in the third mode. In Cell 15, Saint Dominic looks up at the Crucifix and raises his hands towards it, palms joined – a gesture intended to lead to ecstasy.^[23]

The Annunciation

One of the most famous frescoes by Fra Angelico, the Annunciation, which still greets the visitor at the top of the staircase leading to the dormitories, depicts a subject frequently painted by the artist with few variations. The architecture of the loggia reflects the creations that Michelozzo was constructing on the floor below. The aim is to represent only the bare image of Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, giving weight to movement and to the spiritual concentration of the figures. The reality of The Annunciation, the imaginative space it occupies, is precisely on the threshold that separates what is empirical from what may be ascertained only subjectively. The former is the domain of the scenes, the latter of the mind. Angelico used the sense of sight to gain access to the beholder’s imagination, so that the image might mediate the beholders’ inner and outer selves.^[24]

Annunciation

Fra Angelico’s use of light and perspective in the Annunciation to carve out architectural space, combines with the relationship of the painting to the surrounding architecture to give it its sense of “reality.” For this reason, one may overlook the ways Angelico denied reality. The scale of the figures is immense compared to that of the architecture. Moreover, the Virgin Mary interrupts the light by casting a shadow, yet the Archangel Gabriel, who is a disembodied spirit, casts no shadow.^[25]

In the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary is shown in an attitude indicating submission. Much like in the cells depicting Saint Dominic watching the Crucifix, the Annunciation not only illustrates what is in biblical text, but what is in the preacher’s imagination as well. The De modo orandi indicates that the gestures of their hands crossed before their chests suggest the friars’ meditation of Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary.^[26]

[edit] Devotion: Principles And Convictions of the Dominican Order

As followers of Saint Dominic, the Dominicans of the San Marco monastery lived by the maxims of Veritas (Truth), Laudare, Benedicere, Praedicare (to praise, to bless, and to preach), and Contemplare et Contemplata Allis Tradere(to contemplate and pass on the fruits of contemplation). They dedicated their lives to praising God and preaching His virtues. Through prayer, adoration, meditation, and contemplation, the Dominicans devoted themselves to blessing God.^[27]

Saint Dominic advised the Dominicans to preach with the intention of defending the faith and enlightening minds with God’s words. In preaching, the monks aimed to carry out the responsibility that Christ bestowed upon his apostles. They strived to imitate the first apostles who left behind all their possessions and property in order to offer themselves entirely to prayer and professing the word of God. Dominicans of the San Marco monastery committed themselves to being learned, disciplined and poor.^[28] Fra Angelico, who embodied these Dominican principles, had no possessions or property of his own, and turned over all of his artistic profits to his order.^[29]

Still today, throughout the world, disciples of the Dominican Order dedicate themselves to declaring the word of God for the salvation of souls.^[30] The San Marco monastery still serves as an educational edifice, now standing as a public museum to Florence.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• San Marco, Florence is at coordinates 43°46′42″N 11°15′31″E / 43.778445, 11.258545 (San Marco, Florence)Coordinates: 43°46′42″N 11°15′31″E / 43.778445, 11.258545 (San Marco, Florence)

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