Brunelleschi’s work in the neighbourhood of the city was surpassed in grandeur by a building of Michelozzo’s within the walls. In 1436 the Medici brothers obtained from Pope Eugene IV. the cession of the Silvestrine[123] convent of San Marco to the Dominicans of Fiesole, who had just settled beside the little church of San Giorgio, on the left bank of the Arno. In the following year the rebuilding of the convent and restoration of the church was begun; not without difficulties on the part of the former owners, who actually entered a protest at the Council of Basle. The cost of reconstruction was borne mainly by the Medici, with some assistance from the community. The church was consecrated on the feast of the Epiphany, 1442, by Cardinal Acciapacci, Archbishop of Capua, in presence of the Pope and his court.[124] A considerable portion of the convent was finished in 1443; but the whole was not completed till eight years later. The traces of Michelozzo’s hand are no longer to be seen in the church; the choir and apse were rebuilt two hundred years after him. It is impossible to walk through the great courts, the broad vaulted corridors, the endless rows of cells opening into the passages, and the noble library, without remembering that this convent was the scene of many famous events in peace and war that influenced the fate of the city, and left their mark in the history not of Italy only, but of the human mind.[125] Cosimo was continually employing Michelozzo, who, besides the family palace, built for him the Noviciate of Sta. Croce and the adjoining chapel; remodelled the villas at Careggi, Cafaggiuolo, and Trebbio, and executed other works, some of them beyond the Tuscan border. Among the latter was the decoration of the palace at Milan, entrusted to him by Francesco Sforza, for which purpose Michelozzo visited that city. Here also he built for Pigello Portinari, director of the Medicean bank, a chapel in Sant’ Eustorgio after the model of that of the Pazzi in Sta. Croce. Cosimo’s sons employed him likewise. He is commonly believed to have designed for Piero the elegant chapel of the Annunziata, over whose altar hangs the thirteenth century picture of the Annunciation, which gave rise to the building of the church. This building, a quadrangular open chapel, with fluted Corinthian columns of marble supporting a richly decorated entablature, and enclosed by an elegant brass trellis, was executed by Pagno di Lapo Partigiani, a sculptor of Fiesole, and consecrated by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, on Christmas day, 1452.[126]