Museo di San Marco
Map: Museum of San Marco—Ground Floor
The Hospice (Ospizio) and Nearby
The Monastery’s Living Quarters
Map: Museum of San Marco—First Floor
Two of Florence’s brightest lights lived in the San Marco Monastery, a reminder that the Renaissance was not just a secular phenomenon. At the Museum of San Marco, you’ll find these two different expressions of 15th-century Christianity—Fra Angelico’s radiant paintings, fusing medieval faith with Renaissance realism, and Savonarola’s moral reforms, fusing medieval faith with modern politics.
(See “Heart of Florence” map, here.)
Cost: €4, covered by Firenze Card.
Hours: Tue-Fri 8:15-13:50, Sat 8:15-16:50; also open 8:15-13:50 on first, third, and fifth Mon and 8:15-16:50 on second and fourth Sun of each month; last entry 30 minutes before closing. You can reserve an entrance time, but it’s unnecessary.
Getting There: It’s on Piazza San Marco, a block north of the Accademia, and several long blocks northeast of the Duomo (head up Via Ricasoli or Via Cavour). Piazza San Marco is a hub for many buses.
Information: Consider picking up the compact, worthwhile, official guide (€9.50) at the bookstore. Tel. 055-238-8608, www.polomuseale.firenze.it
Length of This Tour: Allow one hour.
Baggage Check: None is available, and large bags are not allowed in the museum (but if you ask nicely, the ticket-taker might watch your bag for you).
Photography: Prohibited.
Cuisine Art: Gelateria Carabè, known for its sumptuous granite (fresh-fruit Italian ices), is just a block away toward the Duomo, at Via Ricasoli 60 red. For recommended eateries nearby, see here.
Starring: Fra Angelico’s paintings and Savonarola’s living quarters.
The ground floor features the world’s best collection of Fra Angelico paintings. The upstairs contains the monks’ cells (living quarters), decorated by Fra Angelico, and the cell of the most famous resident, Savonarola. Restoration is ongoing; expect that some paintings will be out and a room or two may be closed.
• Buy your ticket and enter the courtyard/cloister.
(See “Museum of San Marco—Ground Floor” map, here.)
Stepping into the cloister, you can feel the spirituality of this place, a respite from the hubbub of modern Florence. You’ll see Renaissance arches frame Gothic cross-vaulting—an apt introduction to a monastery built during an optimistic time, when Renaissance humanism dovetailed with medieval spirituality.
In 1439, Cosimo the Elder (the founder of the Medici ruling dynasty and Lorenzo the Magnificent’s grandpa) hired the architect Michelozzo to build the monastery, and invited Fra Angelico’s Dominican community to move here from Fiesole. Fra Angelico (c. 1400-1455) turned down an offer to be archbishop of Florence, instead becoming prior (head monk). He quickly began decorating the monastery walls with frescoes.
• From the entrance, walk straight ahead. On the wall at the end of the first corridor, in the corner of the cloister, is...
The fresco by Fra Angelico shows Dominic, the founder of the order, hugging the bloody cross like a groupie adoring a rock star. Monks who lived here—including Fra Angelico, Savonarola, and Fra Bartolomeo—renounced money, sex, ego, and pop music to follow a simple, regimented life, meditating on Christ’s ultimate sacrifice.
Fra Angelico considered painting to be a form of prayer. He worked to bridge the gap between the infinite (Christ) and the finite (a mortal’s ability to relate to God) by injecting an ethereal atmosphere into his frescoes.
• Now head to the opposite corner of the cloister and enter the Hospice (Ospizio).
Fra Angelico—equal parts monk and painter—fused early-Renaissance technique with medieval spirituality. His works can be admired for their beauty or contemplated as spiritual visions. Browse the room, and you’ll find serene-faced Marys, Christs, and saints wearing gold halos (often painted on altarpieces), bright primary colors (red-blue-yellow/gold), evenly lit scenes, and meticulous detail—all creating a mystical world apart, glowing from within like stained-glass windows.
• Start with the large three-peaked altarpiece—showing the Deposition—at the end of the room.
Christ’s body is lowered from the cross, mourned by haloed women (on the left) and contemporary Florentines (right). There’s a clearly defined foreground (the kneeling, curly-headed man and the woman with her back to us), background (the distant city and hills), and middle distance (the trees).
Though trained in medieval religious painting, Fra Angelico never closed his eyes to the innovations of the budding Renaissance, using both styles all his life. There are Gothic elements, such as the altarpiece frame, inherited from his former teacher (who painted the pinnacles on top). The holy wear halos, and the stretched-out “body of Christ” is symbolically “displayed” like the communion bread.
But it’s truly a Renaissance work. The man in green, lowering Christ, bends forward at a strongly foreshortened (difficult to draw) angle. Christ’s toes, kissed by Mary Magdalene, cross the triptych wall, ignoring the frame’s traditional three-arch divisions. Fra Angelico was boldly “coloring outside the lines” to create a single, realistic scene.
And the holy scene has been removed from its golden heaven and placed in the first great Renaissance landscape—on a lawn, among flowers, trees, cloud masses, real people, and the hillsides of Fiesole overlooking Florence. Fra Angelico, the ascetic monk, refused to renounce one pleasure—his joy in the natural beauty of God’s creation.
• Moving counterclockwise around the room, you’ll find the following works (among others).
In this early, more “medieval” work, Fra Angelico sets (big) Mary and Child in a gold background flanked by (small) saints standing obediently in their niches. When he joined the Dominican community in Fiesole, the artist took the name Giovanni (as he was known in his lifetime), and he wore the same attire as these famous Dominicans (including St. Dominic, far left, and St. Thomas Aquinas, far right)—white robe, blue cape, and tonsured haircut.
Peter Martyr (next to Mary, with bloody head) exemplified the unbending Dominican spirit. Attacked by heretics (see the scene above Peter), he was hacked in the head with a dagger but died still preaching, writing with his own blood: “Credo in Deum” (“I believe in God”).
• Continuing counterclockwise, look at the two small panels sharing one long frame.
Fra Angelico’s teenage training was as a miniaturist, so even these small predella panels (part of a larger altarpiece) are surprisingly realistic. The folds in the clothes, the gold-brocade hemlines, and the precisely outlined people are as though etched in glass. Notice the Renaissance perspective tricks he was exploring, setting the wedding in front of receding buildings and the funeral among candles that get shorter at the back of the scene.
• Next up is...
Despite the Renaissance, Florence in the 1420s was still a city in the Christian universe described by Dante. Hell (to the right) is a hierarchical barbecue where sinners are burned, boiled, and tortured by a minotaur-like Satan, who rules the bottom of the pit. The blessed in heaven (left) play ring-around-the-rosy with angels. In the center, a row of open tombs creates a 3-D highway to hell, stretching ominously to that final Judgment Day.
• On the other side of the pillar are several panels. Look at the one on the left.
The first nine scenes in this life of Christ (the big panel on the left end) are by Fra Angelico himself (the rest by assistants). Like storyboards for a movie, these natural, realistic, and straightforward panels “show” through action, they don’t just “tell” through symbols. (The Latin inscription beneath each panel is redundant.) The miraculous is presented as an everyday occurrence.
1. The Wheel of Ezekiel (OK, that’s medieval symbolism) prophesies Christ’s coming.
2. In the Annunciation, the angel gestures to tell Mary that she’ll give birth.
3. Newborn Jesus glows, amazing his parents, while timid shepherds sneak a peek.
4. Precocious Jesus splays himself and says, “Cut me.”
5. One of the Magi kneels to kiss the babe’s foot.
6. In the temple, the tiny baby is dwarfed by elongated priests and columns.
7. Mary and the baby ride, while Joseph carries the luggage.
8. Meanwhile, babies are slaughtered in a jumble of gore, dramatic poses, and agonized faces.
9. The commotion contrasts with the serenity of the child Jesus in the temple.
This work by 50-year-old Fra Angelico—master of many styles, famous in Italy—has the fresh, simple, and spontaneous storytelling of a children’s book.
• Near the left end of this wall is...
This painting of the executed Christ being mourned silently by loved ones was the last thing many condemned prisoners saw during their final hours. It once hung in a church where the soon-to-be executed were incarcerated.
The melancholy mood is understated, suggested by a series of horizontal layers—Christ’s body, the line of mourners, the city walls, landscape horizon, layered clouds, and the crossbar. It’s as though Christ is being welcomed into peaceful rest, a comforting message from Fra Angelico to the condemned.
“Fra Angelico” (Angelic Brother) is a nickname that describes the artist’s reputation for sweetness, humility, and compassion. It’s said he couldn’t paint a Crucifixion without crying. In 1984, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II and made patron of artists.
• At the far end of the room hangs the...
Check out the impressive size and marble frame (by Ghiberti, of baptistery-door fame), which attest to Fra Angelico’s worldly success and collaboration with the Renaissance greats. The monumental Mary and Child, as well as the saints on the doors, are gold-backed and elegant, to please conservative patrons. In the three predella panels below, Fra Angelico gets to display his Renaissance chops, showing haloed saints mingling with well-dressed Florentines amid local cityscapes and landscapes. (Find Ghiberti in the left panel, kneeling, in blue.)
• On the long wall are three similar-looking altarpieces. Move left to right, watching the...
Fra Angelico (largely) invented what became a common Renaissance theme: Mary and Child surrounded by saints “conversing” informally about holy matters. Four examples in this room show how Fra Angelico, exploring Renaissance techniques, developed the idea over his lifetime.
In the Annalena Altarpiece (c. 1435)—considered Florence’s first true Sacra Conversazione—the saints flank Mary in a neat line, backed by medieval gold in the form of a curtain. Everyone is either facing out or in profile—not the natural poses of a true crowd. There’s little eye contact, and certainly no “conversation.”
Mary and Jesus direct our eye to Mary’s brooch, the first in a series of circles radiating out from the center: brooch, halo, canopy arch, circle of saints. Set in a square frame, this painting has the circle-in-a-square composition that marks many Sacra Conversaziones.
Cosimo the Elder commissioned this painting (c. 1440) as the centerpiece of the new church next door. (Note: The San Marco Altarpiece may be under restoration at the time of your visit.) For the dedication Mass, Fra Angelico theatrically “opens the curtain,” revealing a stage set with a distant backdrop of trees, kneeling saints in the foreground, and a crowd gathered around Mary and Child at center stage on a raised, canopied throne. The carpet makes a chessboard-like pattern to establish 3-D perspective. The altarpiece was like a window onto a marvelous world where the holy mill about on earth as naturally as mortals.
To show just how far we’ve come from Gothic, Fra Angelico gives us a painting-in-a-painting—a crude, gold-backed Crucifixion.
This altarpiece (c. 1450) is Fra Angelico’s last great work, and he uses every stylistic arrow in his quiver: the detailed friezes of the miniaturist; medieval halos and gold backdrop; monumental, naturally posed figures in the style of Masaccio (especially St. Francis, on the left, with his relaxed contrapposto); 3-D perspective established by the floor tiles; and Renaissance love of natural beauty (the trees and sky).
Fra Angelico’s bright colors are eye-catching. The gold backdrop sets off the red-pink handmaidens, which set off Jesus’ pale skin. The deep blue of Mary’s dress, frosted with a precious gold hem, turns out at her feet to show a swath of the green inner lining, suggesting the 3-D body within.
Despite Renaissance realism, Fra Angelico creates a world of his own—perfectly lit, with no moody shadows, dirt, frayed clothing, or imperfections. The faces are certainly realistic, but they express no human emotion. These mortals, through sacrifice and meditation, have risen above the petty passions celebrated by humanist painters, to achieve a serenity that lights them from within.
• From here, we’ll circle the cloister counterclockwise. Exit the Hospice back into the courtyard, walk to the end of the corridor, and enter the next set of rooms (marked Lavabo e Refettorio). The small room on the left has paintings and fresco fragments by...
Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517) lived and worked in this monastery a generation after the “Angelic” brother. Ecce Homo shows the kind of Christ that young, idealistic Dominican monks (like Fra Bartolomeo) adored in their meditations—curly-haired, creamy-faced, dreamy-eyed, bearing the torments of the secular world with humble serenity.
• From Jesus, the third panel on the right is...
St. Dominic holds a finger to his lips—“Shh! We have strict rules in my order.” Dominic (c. 1170-1221), a friend of St. Francis of Assisi, formed his rules after seeing the austere perfetti (perfect ones) of the heretical Cathar sect of southern France. He figured they could only be converted by someone just as extreme, following Christ’s simple, possession-free lifestyle. Nearing 50, Dominic made a 3,400-mile preaching tour—on foot, carrying his luggage—from Rome to Spain to Paris and back. Dominic is often portrayed with the star of revelation over his head.
• One more panel to the right is...
St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274, wearing a hood)—the intellectual giant of the U. of Paris—used logic and Aristotelian models to defend and explain Christianity (building the hierarchical belief system known as Scholasticism). He’s often shown with a heavy build and the sun of knowledge burning in his chest.
• As you face the door, to the left you’ll see...
This is the famous portrait—in profile, hooded, with big nose and clear eyes, gazing intently into the darkness—of the man reviled as the evil opponent of Renaissance goodness. Would it surprise you to learn that it was Savonarola who inspired Fra Bartolomeo’s art? Bartolomeo was so moved by Savonarola’s sermons that he burned his early nude paintings (and back issues of Penthouse), became a monk, gave up painting for a few years...then resurfaced to paint the simple, sweet frescoes we see here.
• Leaving the world of Fra Bartolomeo, return to the courtyard and continue to the next room (Capitolo), which contains the large wall fresco...
This Crucifixion, against a bleak background, is one of more than 20 versions of Christ’s torture/execution in the monastery. It was in this room that naughty monks were examined and judged.
Among the group of hermits, martyrs, and religious extremists who surround the cross, locate Dominic (kneeling at the foot of the cross, in Dominican white robe, blue cape, and tonsured hair, with star on head), Peter Martyr (kneeling in right corner, with bloody head), and Thomas Aquinas (standing behind Peter, with jowls and sun on chest).
The bell in the room is the original church bell, the one that rang a warning to Savonarola the night he was arrested. (The mob was so enraged that they exiled the bell for 10 years.)
• Return to the courtyard, go through the next door, and head upstairs to the first floor.
(See “Museum of San Marco—First Floor” map, here.)
This floor is lined with the cells (bedrooms) of those who lived in the monastery: monks (in the corridor to your left), novice monks (farther down), and lay people and support staff (to your right). We’ll see Savonarola’s quarters in the far corner. Each room was frescoed by Fra Angelico or his assistants.
• At the top of the staircase, you’ll come face-to-face with Fra Angelico’s Annunciation.
Fra Angelico—Annunciation (Annunciazione): Sway back and forth and watch the angel’s wings sparkle (from glitter mixed into the fresco) as he delivers “the good news” to the very humble and accepting Virgin. Mary is under an arcade that’s remarkably similar to the one in the monastery courtyard. Fra Angelico brings this scene home to the monks quite literally.
Paintings such as this one made Fra Angelico so famous that the pope called on him to paint the Vatican. Yet this work, like the other frescoes here, was meant only for the private eyes of humble monks. Monks gathered near the Annunciation for common prayers, contemplating Christ’s life from beginning (Annunciation) to end (Crucifixion with St. Dominic, over your shoulder). The caption reads: Remember to say your Hail Marys.
• From the Annunciation, take a few steps to the left, and look down the (east) corridor lined with monks’ cells to find...
After a long day of prayer, meditation, reading, frugal meals, chopping wood, hauling water, translating Greek, attending Mass, and more prayer, a monk retired to one of these small, bare, lamp-lit rooms. His “late-night TV” was programmed by the prior—Fra Angelico—in the form of a fresco to meditate on before sleep. In monastic life, everything is a form of prayer. Pondering these scenes, monks learned the various aspects of worship: humility, adoration, flagellation, reflection, and so on.
All in all, 43 cells were decorated in the early 1440s by Fra Angelico and his assistants. Many feature a crucifix and St. Dominic, but each shows Dominic in a different physical posture (kneeling, head bowed, head raised, hands folded), which the monks copied in order to attain a more spiritual state.
• Some of Fra Angelico’s best work is found in the 10 cells along the left-hand side. Begin with the first of these cells.
Noli me Tangere: The resurrected Jesus, appearing as a hoe-carrying gardener, says, “Don’t touch me” and gingerly sidesteps Mary Magdalene’s grasp. The flowers and trees represent the blossoming of new life, and they’re about the last we’ll see. Most scenes have stark, bare backgrounds, to concentrate the monk’s focus on just the essential subject.
Lamentation: Christ and mourners are a reverse image of the Lamentation downstairs. Christ levitates, not really supported by the ladies’ laps. The colors are muted grays, browns, and pinks. Dominic (star on head) stands contemplating, just as the monk should do, by mentally transporting himself to the scene.
Annunciation: The painting’s arches echo the room’s real arch. (And they, in turn, harmoniously “frame” the “arch” of Mary and the angel bending toward each other to talk.) Peter Martyr (bloody head) looks on.
You can’t call these cells a wrap until you’ve found at least six crosses, three Dominics, three Peters, and a Thomas Aquinas. Ready...go.
Crucifixion: That’s one cross. And another Dominic.
Birth of Jesus: And there’s your second Peter.
Transfiguration: Forsaking Renaissance realism, Fra Angelico emphasizes the miraculous. In an aura of blinding light, Christ spreads his arms cross-like, dazzling the three witnesses at the bottom of the “mountain.” He’s joined by disembodied heads of prophets, all spinning in a circle echoed by the room’s arch. These rooms, which housed senior monks, have some of the most complex and intellectually demanding symbolism.
The Mocking of Christ: From Renaissance realism to Dalí surrealism. Dominic, while reading the Passion, conjures an image of Christ—the true king, on a throne with a globe and scepter—now blindfolded, spit upon, slapped, and clubbed by...a painting of medieval symbols of torment. This must have been a puzzling riddle from the Master to a fellow monk.
The Empty Tomb: The worried women are reassured by an angel that “he is risen.” Jesus, far away in the clouds, seems annoyed that they didn’t listen to him.
Mary Crowned: ...triumphantly in heaven, while Dominic, Peter, Aquinas, Francis, and others prepare to celebrate with high-fives.
Presentation in the Temple: Baby Jesus is swaddled like a mummy. And there’s your final Peter.
• Continue around the bend—Savonarola’s three rooms are at the far end of the corridor.
Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) occupied the cluster of rooms at the end of the hall. But before you climb the three steps to his cells, stop at the last two rooms along the hall (on the right). Here you’ll find a number of his possessions, including 
fragments of a banner (Lo Stendardo del Savonarola) and 
his blue cloak and personal crucifix. Savonarola’s life changed dramatically at 22, when he heard a sermon on repentance. He traded his scholar’s robes for the blue cloak of a simple Dominican monk. He quickly became known for his asceticism, devotion, and knowledge of the Bible. His followers rallied around this banner, painted with a gruesome Crucifixion scene in the Fra Angelico style. They paraded through the streets reminding all that Christ paid for their worldly Renaissance sins.
• Now enter 
Savonarola’s Cells.
The portrait bust shows the hooded monk, whose personal charisma and prophetic fervor led him from humble scholar to celebrity preacher to prior of San Marco to leader of Florence to controversial martyr. The relief under the portrait bust shows Savonarola at his greatest moment. He stands before the Florence city council and pledges allegiance to Florence’s constitution, assuming control of the city after the exile of the Medici (1494). Reviled as a fanatical, regressive tyrant and praised as a saint, reformer, and champion of democracy, Savonarola was a complex man in a position of great power during turbulent times.
Various paintings depict Savonarola in action, including one by Federico Andreotti, which shows the powerful monk reproaching two troublemakers in his study.
• The next room is Savonarola’s...
Seated at this desk, in his ecclesiastical folding chair, Savonarola scoured his Bible for clues to solve Florence’s civic strife.
In 1482 at age 30, the monk had come to San Marco as a lecturer. He was bright, humble...and boring. Then, after experiencing divine revelations, he spiced his sermons with prophecies of future events...which started coming true. His sermons on Ezekiel, Amos, Exodus, and the Apocalypse predicted doom for the Medici family. He made brazen references to the pope’s embezzling and stable of mistresses, and preached hope for a glorious future after city and church were cleansed.
Packed houses heard him rail against the “prostitute church...the monster of abomination.” Witnesses wrote that “the church echoed with weeping and wailing,” and afterward “everyone wandered the city streets dazed and speechless.” From this humble desk, he corresponded with the worldly pope, the humanist Pico della Mirandola, and fans, such as Lorenzo the Magnificent, who begrudgingly admired his courage.
Lorenzo died, the bankrupt Medici were exiled, and Florence was invaded by France...as Savonarola had prophesied. In the power vacuum, the masses saw Savonarola as a moderate voice who championed a return to Florence’s traditional constitution. He was made head of a Christian commonwealth.
• Finally, step into the...
Savonarola’s personal moral authority was unquestioned, as his simple wool clothes and rosary attest.
At first, his rule was just. He cut taxes, reduced street crime, shifted power from rich Medici to citizens, and even boldly proposed banning Vespas from tourist zones.
However, Savonarola had an uncompromising and fanatical side, as his hair-shirt girdle suggests. His government passed strict morality laws against swearing, blasphemy, gambling, and ostentatious clothes, which were enforced by gangs of thuggish teenagers. At the height of the Christian Republic, during Lent of 1497, followers built a huge “bonfire of vanities” on Piazza della Signoria, where they burned wigs, carnival masks, dice, playing cards, musical instruments, and discredited books and paintings.
In 1498, several forces undermined Savonarola’s Republic: scheming Medici, crop failure, rival cities, a pissed-off pope threatening excommunication for Savonarola and political isolation for Florence, and a public tiring of puritanism. Gangs of opponents (called Arrabbiati, “Rabid Dogs”) battled Savonarola’s supporters (the “Weepers”). Meanwhile, Savonarola was slowly easing out of public life, refusing to embroil the church in a lengthy trial, retiring to his routine of study, prayer, and personal austerity.
Egged on by city leaders and the pope, a bloodthirsty mob marched on San Marco to arrest Savonarola. Arrabbiati fought monks with clubs (imagine it in the courtyard out the window), while the church bells clanged and the monks shouted, “Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine!” (“Save thy people, Lord!”). The Arrabbiati stormed up the stairs to this floor, and Savonarola was handed over to the authorities. He was taken to the Palazzo Vecchio, tortured, tried, and sentenced.
On May 23, 1498 (see the painting Supplizio del Savonarola in Piazza della Signoria), before a huge crowd in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (where today a memorial plaque is embedded in the pavement of the Piazza della Signoria), Savonarola was publicly defrocked, then publicly forgiven by a papal emissary. Then he was hanged—not Old West-style, in which the neck snaps, but instead slowly strangled, dangling from a rope, while teenage boys hooted and threw rocks.
The crowd looked upon the lifeless body of this man who had once captivated their minds, as they lit a pyre under the scaffold—see the stick (palo) from the fire. The flames rose up, engulfing the body, when suddenly...his arm shot upward!—like a final blessing or curse—and the terrified crowd stampeded, killing several. Savonarola’s ashes were thrown in the Arno.
The corridor near Fra Angelico’s Annunciation has the library (also designed by Michelozzo), which contains music and other manuscripts. In a cell across the hall and a bit to the right is Fra Angelico’s 
Kiss of Judas fresco—a theme that proved prophetic, since it was outside that cell that Savonarola was arrested. At the end of the corridor (right side) are 
Cosimo the Elder’s cells. As the builder of this monastery, he often retired here for spiritual renewal. Inside, the painting of the Magi includes a kneeling Magus kissing the baby’s little holy toes—a portrait of Cosimo.
• To exit, return to the stairway and descend. Take a right at the bottom into a bookshop decorated with a fine Ghirlandaio Last Supper fresco (are you as tired as John is?). WCs are in the next hallway. Pass through corridors filled with a hodgepodge of architectural fragments and on to the exit. On the street, turn right, then right again, and you’ll see the Campanile of the Duomo.