San Marco Museum

We visited San Marco in 2011 and 2013 and decided 2022 might be a good year to return. We'd just seen Fra (Beato) Angelica's tomb at the church of SM Sopra Minerva in Rome, plus many of his works at the Uffizi.

The religious complex of San Marco is known for many things...the interest and generosity of Cosimo Medici (the Patriarch) in rebuilding and upgrading it, the (arguably) first public library contained therein, the many, many frescoes and paintings by Fra Angelica, the burial site of Pico della Miradola, (arguably) the intellectual father of Humanism, another of Ghirlandaio's Last Suppers, and last, and least, the shrine of the demagogue priest Savanarola's take-over of Florence in the 1490s. The previous posts do the place some justice, but there are always a few new things, or things seen in new ways, and maybe a correction or two.... 

It's a huge place, earlier 15th century, funded by Cosimo and
designed by his personal architect, Michelozzi

The four interior walls of the cloister are decorated with these
beautiful frescoes, by Fra Angelica, Fra Bartolomeo, and others;
this one by Fra Angelica, two Dominicans welcoming Jesus as
a pilgrim; it's all about Dominicans, you see...

Fra Angelica's San Marcos altarpiece...he was adept at both the
International Gothic as well as the beauteous frescoes emerging
in the via moderna; as the blurb below suggests, while this is an
old-style sacred conversation, it is amply informed by Brunelleschi's
theories of perspective and by van Eyck's realism...

[click to enlarge] except Fra Angelica and his peers knew little
of oil painting, which van Eyck had pioneered and mastered a
generation before

Anyhow, Fra Angelica was also pretty adept at the lurid 

Last Judgment genre too

We of course never look at anything but the Hell
side, since it is always the more interesting

Apparently they feed you in Hell; maybe punishment for those
guilty of the sin of selective eating disorder?

Eat and be eaten 

But mostly he did the pretty stuff

"Wheel! Of! Ezekiel!" (Ezekiel 10:9-10, for those of you keeping
score at home)

Madonna et bambina?

True confession time: we're in the gift shop now, formerly a 
refectory, and I am not recognizing this Last Supper as one of
Ghirlandaio's; frankly, it is so colorful...re-done, I guess...that it
almost looks fresh; the only identifying signage said it was a
"photographic reproduction," whatever that could mean; every
site I've visited on the web identifies it as one of Ghirlandaio's
three Florence Last Suppers; I should have noted that the
composition is exactly like the one at the Ognissanti (except for
the cat); I still prefer the one at the Ognissanti...it is set in a
real refectory, it looks like it's been there for 500+ years, and
there's the synopia of it on the adjacent wall

Going upstairs where the monks' cells are...an Annunciation that
is one of Fra Angelica's biggest hits

Actual Tree of Jesse; not the figurative one that some people prefer

The library...see the description below...

Among several displays...books, hymnals, writing, copying, and
printing apparati

Must preserve the books, can't sell them, must permit the public
to have access to them...yes, maybe the first modern public library

Since we were here last, they've really upgraded the Savanarola
shrine; here, part of his cell (he was the head monk)

Among the relics

Said to be his cloak...note the gold trim; apparently he still has
some fans...

Spare parts and helpful model; great place...