Fra Angelico

Welcome to the Italian Renaissance podcast where we discuss the culture and art of 15th and 16th century Italy. I'm your host, Laurence Giannangeli. Andiamo avanti. Renaissance people. Welcome back to the Italian Renaissance podcast and the continuation of our journey through the early Renaissance. Today's discussion is going to come in several parts because we're going to be looking closely at the history, the art, and the circumstances of the rebuilding of the convent of San Marco in Florence. That is not to be confused with San Marco in Venice, although both are dedicated to Mark the Evangelist. Very important to this story is that it was funded entirely by Cosimo de' Medici, who had close ties with the convent itself, and his patronage in this space included the architect Michelozzo, who we discussed in the last episode as the architect of the Medici palace, and a very important early Renaissance painter and monk by the name of Fra Angelico. The story of San Marco's reconstruction begins in 1437 when Cosimo officially commissioned the architectural modifications to what was truly a neglected site. Before we look at this closely, we must understand the circumstances that led to Cosimo investing a massive amount of money on San Marco's reconstruction. Very interesting history here, guys. A few years before, in 1434, Pope Eugenius IV fled Rome and moved the Papal Curia to Florence, that is the Curia, his court, where it took residence in the church and convent of Santa Maria Novella. This is the same year that Cosimo returned to Florence from his exile in Venice and resumed his de facto rule of republican Florence, with now strong pro-Medician support. I want to reiterate, de facto rule. It was a republic, but he was pulling the strings. So with the Pope living in the city, that's right, the Papal Curia was being run out of a period in the early 15th century. So with the Pope living in the city and indeed being in contact with this de facto ruler, Cosimo de' Medici, certain questions about morality arose, namely the circumstances in which the Medici family had amassed their unparalleled fortune. I want to say clearly that I am in absolutely no way an economic historian, and frankly, I do very little research on banking structures in the early modern period, but it is essential and very important for us to understand that usury, that's a sin, this type of sin, usury, that being granting loans with interest, was considered one of the worst sins and outlawed by the church. So banks collecting interest were considered to be committing sins, so they weren't really allowed to do it. While the laws of the church are not always imposed by the republic itself, the laws of the church were indeed a societal norm, and so they rendered the amassing of wealth via usury a social faux pas, and sometimes the church was the law. So Cosimo knew that much of the Medici fortune was indeed the result of interest payments, that means the sin of usury, and thus he had problems reconciling this not only with his own relationship with the church, Papal Curia, which was now at his doorstep in Florence, but his own personal devotion because Cosimo was a devout religious man. How then could Cosimo have reconciled his immoral wealth with the norms of his society? This is where San Marco comes into play. Not only the Medici, every wealthy family in Florence worked their salt, gave their patronage and their money to the beautification and decoration of churches and religious spaces, yet Cosimo had a much grander idea in mind. I want us to always remember that although we constantly talk about classical revival in art, the single most important area in which the antique world was resurfacing in the Renaissance was in literature, and Cosimo worked diligently to collect, to copy, and to preserve the authors of antiquity that were known to him, and if they were known and they did not have their works, he invested in finding their works. And beyond that, he was not the first or the only collector of ancient texts in Florence. Among the most prominent of the humanists of the early Renaissance was an eccentric man by the name of Niccolò Niccoli. He was intent on hunting down and bringing to Florence as many authors of antiquity as possible. I want to refresh your memory, I called Niccolò Niccoli a humanist. Humanism, Renaissance humanism, these are the people who believe in the revival of classical Latin, the language of Cicero, and the reconciliation of antique practice, pagan practice, and antique philosophy with their contemporary Christian practices to revive ancient Greek culture. Those are the humanists. So in addition, Niccolò Niccoli allowed his text to be loaned out, passed around, and diligently promoted the idea that Florentine society would rise to be the most prominent in Europe if its citizens learned the virtues of ancient Greek and Latin texts, the very fabric of Renaissance humanistic culture. Niccoli spent his life cultivating a learned culture in Florence, amassing this collection of texts unparalleled in the city. The year 1437, the year Niccolò Niccoli died, is when his collection of hundreds of manuscripts went to the safest hands in the city, his friend, his fellow humanist, Cosimo de' Medici. In this way, Cosimo has now acquired this massive collection of texts from Niccolò Niccoli. Cosimo can maintain the essence of Niccoli by constructing a public library in the heart of Florence. Okay, this is the spot that San Marco is. So a convent that already existed was a natural choice. Why? Monks had been the keepers of books since late antiquity, and many of the volumes that were found and taken to Florence to be copied were from the manuscript hunters as far back as Petrarch. We remember Petrarch. These texts were famously neglected. The monks often had a bad reputation among the humanists based on how poorly they cared for these books. And yet, they were expert copyists, and they labored in the art of bookmaking. So if they are properly funded and held accountable, the monks are actually doing good works as far as bookmaking is concerned. So for Cosimo, San Marco was the perfect place to build this public library for Niccoli's collection and to serve as his penitence for benefiting from the sin of usury, be it for his personal reasons, or his inherited wealth, or because the Pope was there. It also advances his goal as a humanist, one with a palace fashioned after Imperial Rome, built by Michelozzo, that ceaselessly sought to revive antiquity and even outdo it in his own city of Florence. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Renaissance people, if you are enjoying the Italian Renaissance podcast, I have good news. We're now active on Patreon. You can show your love for the show by becoming a patron and get access to additional resources, information, and artworks. Better yet, those who join the Renaissance Master or Renaissance Patron tier will get access to at least one additional podcast episode each month. My goal is to ensure that the main podcast remains a free, accessible source for everyone. Become a patron today through the link in the show notes to support the continued production of new episodes and help build and maintain this community. The Italian Renaissance Shop is now also active on Etsy, linked in the show notes. Sport our logo or choose from a growing selection of Italian art-inspired designs. Discounts are offered to select Patreon tiers as well. Your support has my immortal gratitude. Now, enjoy the show. Cosimo diligently hired scouts and copyists to create new books for the San Marco Library. So Cosimo was duly patronizing a space that appealed to the Pope and the religious powers that governed Italy via the investment in a religious structure, the Klondon of San Marco, as well as the public and civic goals of Republican Florence by opening a public library with the complete breadth of texts that were known, cared for, wanted, and valued in the 15th century. Yet there was a problem with the Silvestri monks who currently inhabited San Marco. That's until 1437 they were there and they followed the rule of Saint Benedict. So San Marco was in a prime location in Florence and even more importantly, very close to the Piazza Medici. So the space was reported to actually have been in a dialect state under the guidance of the and so they had to go. And they did vacate San Marco at the command of the Pope, who was still in Florence at that time. So Cosimo then invested tens of thousands of Florence into the renovations for a new group of Dominican friars, not Benedictine friars, and that includes our painter Fra Angelico among them. So we have the social background and historical background, so let's look at the project itself. Cosimo then worked with his prized architect, Michelozzo, to work on the new architectural plan for the convent, which included the new church, cloister, and the library. For those unaware, a cloister is a squared courtyard area that is standard in monastic architecture, monastic architecture being of convents, abbeys, places where monks and nuns live, and they're usually with some type of arcade or colonnade garden area in the center, and they were designed for walking around and contemplating the religious doctrines. So the church had gone through many changes over the centuries, like the physical church of San Marco in Florence, so it doesn't actually give us much to consider about Michelozzo's design, as in its change since the neoclassical period in the 18th century, but the cloister and the library are more or less the original structures. So although highly regular, it is the details of the cloister where we see Michelozzo's ingenuity. Remember, it is set in an arcade, there's this sort of portico in the cloister, and the capitals of the columns are pure invention. I love this, Glantz would make them appear as standard Ionic capitals. If we remember our Greek orders, our Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic, that is, the Ionic capitals look like a scroll in ancient Greek architecture. But if you look closely at the capitals inside Michelozzo's cloister, they are not just scroll-like, they are scrolls, like they're scrolls that you would read in an ancient Greek sort of way, or an ancient Egyptian sort of way, like a scroll, a parchment scroll, or a papyrus scroll, which is recalling what the structure was as it relates to the patron, Cosimo, and the artist, Michelozzo. So here, the very manuscripts that will be available through the patron's money, through Niccolo Niccoli's collection, to the public of the Florence, are the column capitals, symbolically holding up the entire structure, because it's holding up the roof, which is holding up the second floor. And not only are the monks reminded by this feature of their duty to maintain those texts as they walk the cloister and contemplate, given the history of monks to neglect their books, but the convent is inherently indebted to the humanist of Florence, who is holding up the weight of the convent. And the library then is actually structured like a church. It has a nave, it has side aisles, and here monks could copy and reproduce text to endure their survival. These parchment books, which I said are in animal skin, in Renaissance libraries were not as we know them today. Books were extremely expensive and time-consuming to make, so a Renaissance library looks like a series of reading benches, kind of like church pews, and the monks will bring you the volume from the storerooms where the books were kept, or you can also find large texts outfitted with mechanisms that allow them to be chained to the desks so that you couldn't leave the library with them. So some books could be displayed this way too. You can walk in and there can be a bench that has these prized texts on them, but they're chained to it. So overall, we have to understand the public book reading in the Renaissance was not a cozy, by-the-fire situation, but a highly regulated practice where one was entrusted with a very valuable and expensive object in a strictly controlled environment. So the library is located on the second floor above the cloister, and around the cloister on the second floor is also where the cells are. So that's not prison cells. The living area of a monk is called a cell, which comes from the Latin cella or cella, which simply means small room. Quasimo ensured that he would have his own cell in the monastery so that he could spend time living as and among the monks. Everything seems to indicate that Quasimo's piety was not explicitly a matter of propaganda, but shows him truly as a man of his time who constantly worked to make a new modernity from antiquity, but reconciled with his contemporary Christian moment. This is explicitly evident in the way that Michelotto blends symbolism with monastic function and even integrates a physical space for Quasimo in the structural layout of the complex. When Michelotto's construction was in various phases, Fra Angelico worked to paint the interior of the monastery. Just to clarify for you guys, Fra, as in Fra Angelico, simply means friar or brother. It means monk, like the title, like a title for a monk. It's like brother. Because he was also referred to as Beato Angelico, Beato, blessed, as in he was assumed into heaven. Renaissance people, I want to stress that Fra Angelico is not some throwaway painter that opened to fresco the interior of his own convent, but rather one of the most important painters of the early Renaissance. Yes, indeed, his most celebrated works are found right there in San Marco, but he was also brought to Rome to fresco the Nicoline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. So, this is not some small painter and we're talking a widely celebrated artist who really injects the spiritual essence of a friar into the emerging Renaissance style, but maintains a type of ethereal spirituality in his work. We're going to look at them. Inside the convent, Fra Angelico painted a large number of paintings, including inside of the cells. Inside of Cosimo's cell, we can still see an adoration of the Magi. Guys, remember, think back to my episode on the Magi of Florence. You might recall that the Magi had a special association with them, making it an appropriate theme for Cosimo's personal self. Fra Angelico's very celebrated Annunciation, that is when the Virgin Mary is sitting in the enclosed garden and the angel Gabriel comes to announce to her she will bear the Messiah, is the first painting that one sees when they arrive at the stairs leading up to the monk's cells. This is a very celebrated work and it calls upon all of the trademarks of the modern Renaissance style, namely, classicizing architectural elements, excellent linear perspective, that's actually outfitted for where you see them at the bottom of the stairs brilliantly, and a masterful expression of light, right in the tradition of Masaccio. But it is not the Annunciation that I want to take as our centerpiece for our discussion. But instead, what is known as the San Marco Altarpiece, completed sometime between 1438 and 1445. So, what are we talking about here? If you guys pull this up, Fra Angelico's San Marco Altarpiece, you will notice that it is a Renaissance altarpiece, but it is not with its frame, it is not with its padella, that series of smaller paintings that go under it, although they've been broken up and we can reconstruct what that might look like. Additionally, it has been overly cleaned. Over the years, especially paintings that stay on site, they get varnished, check them, the varnish accumulates darkness from candle smoke, because these are in religious places that burn a lot of candles, or because in the period, candles were used for light, they get dark, and in subsequent centuries, they try to clean them. And sometimes they end up scrubbing a little too hard. And that happened to this painting with very poor restoration. And yet, we do not lose the quality of the space in the composition. What do we have here? It is a Madonna enthroned, recessed into space, surrounded by saints, including Dominican saints, because this is a Dominican convent. Off to the right, you can identify them by the black cloak on top of their white carpet. And who do we have in the foreground? One looking at us, one looking at the Madonna. These are the saints Plasmas and Damian. That is the two patron saints of the Medici family, from which Cosimo gets his name. Saint Plasmas is one of them, and they're always together. And what do we have if we look, if Cosmas or Damian, I never know which one, frankly, is looking at us, and then he's gesturing, and we look over at his comrade Damian, who is looking at the Madonna enthroned, look at her throne. If you think about this compared to all the precedents we looked at with Giotto, with Gentile da Fabriano, what we have here is a Madonna sitting enthroned with the Christ on her lap, inside of a Renaissance-style classical revival that is architectural elements of Florentine Renaissance architecture developed by Brunelleschi from antique models brought to Michelotso, and either Frangelico is just observing it in the convent around him, or he directly consulted with Michelotso or Brunelleschi on the rendering of this new stylistic architecture. We're talking about a friar. We're talking about a monk who is directly engaged with the modern language of his visual culture. That is, think back to Domenico Veneziano, we have a square-format altarpiece, no more pointed arches, and what is going on on the ground? My favorite detail, that is absolutely and undoubtedly an Anatolian carpet, Anatolia being modern-day Burki. That means this is a Turkish carpet, presumably from some part of the developing Ottoman Empire before they take Constantinople, which is going to happen very soon, which shows that even though there is this great anxiety about the Muslims, we still have Anatolian Ottoman artwork. I'm not sure if it's exactly Ottoman, it's at least from that part of the world, it's at least this so-called Muslim arts, and it is right here on the ground of a Madonna enthroned. But there is something really, really particular about this Anatolian carpet, and that is, in the design that you see, even though it's used as a perspective device, look, there's a single vanishing point, Albertian linear perspective, very, very clear, mathematical, but it also has the device of the Medici, the palais, balls. That is on the carpet. What does that tell us? One of two very interesting things. Was there a carpet that existed that the Medici commissioned from Anatolian rug makers that had their stemma, it's called, their heraldic device? Maybe. I would love to find that carpet. I don't know that it exists. Or, as for Angelico, the same way, remember Pseudo-Kufic. Remember the way they take Arabic script and then make up a design out of it. They got from Mamluk metalwork and put it in the gilding of the halos or in the hems of a cloak. Is he simply taking Islamic motif and integrating it and then using it for his own means? Has Fra Angelico invented an Anatolian carpet that was somehow, we can assume, commissioned by the Medici? And what does this say about Cosimo's power when you have the patron saints of the house of Medici kneeling on it before the Madonna? Pretty elaborate stuff here. And then, look at this amazing detail that actually Ghirlandaio will do a lot in the future. Instead of the gold background, we have all of these trees, cypress trees, cedar trees, they all have their religious affiliation that we don't need to get into. Now, look to the left and look to the right. The gold curtain, it's like the background that was on all those old paintings is being peeled back and tied up like a curtain because they are gold. And they do remind you of the paintings that came before this. It's a statement. This is a modern painting. And you know what reminds you of that? Even more is in the very foreground, what do you have in the direct middle facing us? A small, standard, medieval painting of a crucifixion. A painting within a painting. Why? Because this was at the high altar and the high pull out the crucifixion scene to go with the mass. Well, Frangelico said, you don't have to pull out a small painting anymore. I'll embed it in the altarpiece itself. I will also remind you of the old style and I will show off the new style all while maintaining this devout, holy, and religious sort of aspect in work. So, it's implicating the viewer and it's also making the altarpiece more functional in the mass. What a brilliant innovation. Overall, this altarpiece speaks to the vibrant layers of history happening in the whole space. Yes, we see Frangelico express himself as an artist, a devout friar who wants to exhibit holy figures in a truly spiritual and pious way, but also a modern painter who is keen on trends and the visual changes happening in his society and even injects invention with the paintings within the painting. But we are alerted to the patrons, both Cosimo de' Medici and the convent itself of San Marco as an institution, reminding us that this is a hierarchical society where an individual family is lauded in a work meant for divine inspiration and function. In every way, the artist merges with the political landscape, the patron, the institution, and the modern trends of their time. By the mid-1440s, San Marco was up and running, consecrated by Pope Eugenius with a public library and a large quantity of Renaissance-style paintings by Frangelico within the masterful architecture of Michelozzo, all for the benefit of Cosimo de' Medici's public image. I am a big fan of Frangelico, but I do not plan to discuss his work on the podcast with any greater detail. We need to keep in mind that he is the next step away from Masaccio, but very much using Masaccio as a reference. He was a friar, a monk, a brother of the Dominican order, and his serious relationship with that role is shown in his paintings. However, that is not always the case when it comes to artist-monks. And so next time, we're going to have a close look at the life and work of the most famous bad-boy monk of the Renaissance, Fra Filippo Lippi, and an artist under Cosimo de' Medici's patronage. Please continue to engage with our content on social media. Leave us a review if you're enjoying the show. So, share this far and wide. Tell your friends to tune in, too. Until next time, my dear Renaissance people, thank you for listening. Arrivederci.