In discussing the Dominican convent of S. Marco in Florence, Edward Hutton quoted Vasari who claimed that the convent is "the most perfectly arranged, the most beautiful and most convenient building of its kind that can be found in Italy." Hutton's own description showed his love for the work of Fra Angelico.
Fra Angelico was nearly fifty years old when his Order took possession of S. Marco. Already he had painted three choir books, which Cosimo so loved that he wished nothing else to be used in the convent, for, as Vasari tells us, their beauty was such that no words can do justice to it. Born in 1387, he had entered the Order of St. Dominic in 1408 at Fiesole. The convent into which he had come had only been founded in 1406… he had early been a traveller, going with the brethren to Foligno and later to Cortona, returning to Fiesole in 1418. Who amid these misfortunes could have been his master? It might seem that in the silence of the sunny cloister in the long summer days of Umbria, some angel passing up the long valleys stayed for a moment beside him, so that for ever after he could not forget that vision….It is certainly some divinity that we find in those clouds of saints and angels, those marvellously sweet Madonnas, those majestic and touching crucifixions, that with a simplicity and sincerity beyond praise, Angelico has left up and down Italy, and not least in the convent of S. Marco.
Yes, it is a divine world he has dreamed of, peopled by saints and martyrs, where the flowers are quickly woven into crowns and the light streams from the gates of Paradise, and every breeze whispers the sweet sibilant name of Jesus, and there, on the bare but beautiful roads, Christ meets His disciples, or at the convent gate welcomes a traveller, and if He be not there, He has but just passed by, and if He has not just passed by He is to come. It is for Him the sun is darkened, to lighten His footsteps the moon shall rise; because His love has lightened the world men go happily, and because He is here the world is a garden. In all that convent of S. Marco you cannot turn a corner but Christ is awaiting you, or enter a room but His smile changes your heart, or linger in the threshold, but He bids you enter in, or eat at midday but you see Him on the Cross, and hear, “Take, eat; this is My Body, which was given for you.”…
Pass into the Refectory and He is there; go into the Capitolo and He is there also, the Prince of life between two malefactors, hanging on a cross for love of the world, and in His face all the beauty and sweetness of the earth have been gathered and purged of their dross, and between His arms is the kingdom of Heaven. In that room the name of Jesus continually vibrates with an intense and passionate life, more wonderful, more beautiful, and more terrible than the tremor of all the sea. And it has brought together in adoration not the world…but those who above the tumult of their hearts have caught some faint far echo of that supernal concord which has bound together the whispering universe; for there beneath the Cross of Jesus are none but saints…
Pass into the dormitories, and in every cell you enter Jesus is there before you; on the threshold the angel announces His advent, and little by little, scene by scene, you are involved in the beauty and tragedy of His life….It is the spirit of Christianity that we see here, blossoming everywhere, haphazard like the wild flowers that are the armies of spring.
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Note: Image of the Annunciation by David Orme.
Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 208-210.
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