The Museo Nazionale di San Marco occupies the former Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence. Michelozzo designed it and completed it over about ten years, from 1436 to 1446, reusing medieval walls from a late 13th-century Sylvestrian monastery. Cosimo de' Medici commissioned and financed it for the reformed Dominicans of Fiesole. The article calls it a typical example of measured and orderly Florentine Renaissance architecture.
Fra Angelico frescoed the friars' 44 cells between 1439 and 1443. The library, built by Michelozzo on the first floor, opened in 1444 with over 400 volumes on 64 benches. Recent restoration revealed its original green imitation-marble color scheme.
The convent was seized in 1808 and partly confiscated by a decree of July 7, 1866. It reopened as a museum in 1869, the same year Gaetano Bianchi restored the frescoes. The large Crucifixion's background has lost its blue pigment.
Comments